HOME Glossary Connectors Intro | Freezes | Hardware | Extensions | Finder | Desktop | Troubleshooting Links Mac OS 8 & 9 Crashes When does it happen? 1) Before the extensions load (more than likely a Hardware Issue) 2) During extension loading (probably one of many possible Extension Conflicts/Bugs) 3) After extensions load when the finder starts (check Finder/Desktop Integrity) 4) After the menus and desktop icons appear (see: When you get to the Desktop) IMPORTANT! Try to recall whether the problem first became apparent with the installation or enabling of new software or hardware. If so, start there. For example, if you had virus detection software turned ON during a recent install, it could have seriously affected your machine and caused your current problem. Keep a log of your freezes and crashes and record exactly what you were doing and what exact sequence led up to the problem. Then record what you tried and if it worked. Patterns can emerge that will help both you and any technical support people you may deal with later. Two little known programs called Detective and Yooz will automatically log the programs you use and they are launched and quit. Studying the logs might help you remember your usage and crash patterns Intro | Freezes | Crashes | Extensions | Finder | Desktop | Troubleshooting Links Hardware Issues Newer models that ship with the rainbow colored candy-cane style power cords are prone to having a defective power cable. If the Energy Saver Control Panel is set to Restart automatically after power fail and you here the startup tone each time your machine crashes, try swapping out the power cord for the processor. If that doesn't work try a different outlet. If you use any SCSI peripherals, you may want to unplug the SCSI cable after powering down and then try to restart. The SCSI cable is a heavy wire at least as thick as the power wire that plugs into a 25 pin connector on the rear of your Mac marked by a disk drive icon. If you have recently added a new SCSI device, you should be aware that each peripheral added to the SCSI bus must have a unique ID address number that is usually set by a switch on the back of each the peripheral device itself. The number ranges from zero to six. Zero is normally used as the ID for the internal drive. Make sure there are no duplicate IDs and also that there is a terminator plug installed on the last item in the chain unless internally terminated. A good rule of thumb is to have the highest ID numbers assigned to the fastest peripherals. If you have them or can borrow or buy some, try fresh, short, high quality (thick, gold-plated connectors) cables. Sometimes getting a chain of SCSI devices to work is a black art of trial and error. Be sure you never have two devices in a chain that are both internally terminated. Sometimes changing the device order or temporarily removing items in the chain can help. The total length of the combined SCSI cables should not be over twenty feet. A mounter control panel like SCSI Probe is very helplful. Many other companies bundle a mounter into their offerings like FWB Software and LaCie (Silverlining). LoadADrive will even let you mount a CD if you had the extensions turned off during startup If you can successfully restart from bootable media, you might try Disk First Aid for starters. If the program terminates with an error message, try running it a second time, just in case. If this is not sufficient you can then try your favorite disk doctor, also from bootable media. CAUTION: If you have a 5200, 6200, 7200 or 7500 Power Mac of early manufacture, it is possible for older versions of Norton Disk Doctor to accidentally erase your entire hard drive. To fix this problem, Symantec has released a special free utility called Disk Spot Check which is no longer available. This stark example points up the danger of running the first model or release of any new hardware or software product. Another useful procedure is to update the disk drivers in your boot blocks on the system disk drive. You can use Apple's Drive Setup if you own an Apple drive. If you use Silver Lining from LaCie, it will tell you if your disk drivers need updating. Both SCSI Director Pro (now discontinued) from Transoft and HDT Toolkit from FWB Software are serialized, so you may end up crippled in your hour of need. FWB's toolkit is frequently unable to update the drivers in any case. Be sure your copy of any such programs is current and ready to run. It is best to prepare a working copy of your favorite hard disk formatting utility on bootable media in advance, just in case. Once you choose formatting software, stick with one program if you use it on removable media. NOTE: A floppy disk with bad boot blocks can crash a machine instantly, just by inserting it into the drive. Another problem for System 7 and above users is 400K floppies. Lock the diskette! You cannot rename a 400K floppy disk, create a new file folder or even see folders! Be aware that command-option-shift-delete will keep the internal hard drive from mounting during a restart while test-booting from an alternate drive. If your machine has a CD-ROM drive and you have any bootable CDs, you may want to try holding down the "C" key at the beginning of the restart process to test whether you can boot from a CD. If you set the Startup Disk control panel to boot from another device, remember to set it back to your internal drive once it is running again. If you don't, your boot time may slow down. At some point in your examination of the machine, with the power OFF, try unplugging all cables. Examine all connectors for bent, corroded or receding pins. First, reattach only the keyboard, mouse and Monitor, then reboot. Examine the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) with the Focus BusTool utility if the keyboard or mouse are behaving erratically or not functioning at all. It will scan all 16 ADB ports and list the ones that are active, if only one shows up, something is wrong! It will also let you reset the bus. A defective mouse or keyboard can cause a machine to crash, so if you can temporarily test your machine with a different set known to be working, it may help to isolate the problem. Be sure to try fresh cables in the process. If the machine does not see an ADB device on a regular basis, you can also try Mouse Jolt. If your keyboard and mouse are the newer USB devices found on G3's and G4's instead of the older ADB style, then there is a developer tool called USB prober that is of more limited use, but will give a list of recognized devices. If you think you problems may be related to your serial port you might want to play with the free PortPeek or SerialCheck tools. Overheating is a potential problem on models that have a defective fan. You will have to be the one to find out whether the blade is spinning. There may be a separate fan mounted on top of the processor chip. For G3s or G4s there is a nifty utility called Thermograph that plots processor temperature. An overheated floppy drive can cause a crash, showing Errors 10 or 15. If this happens you might notice whether your fan is running and whether the weather is exceptionally hot. If the floppy is external, you can try pointing a fan at it. If you suspect a hardware problem, try running TechTool Pro from Micromat at (800) 829-6227. Use it on bootable media, if your hard drive won't boot. If your floppy or hard disk has given read or write errors, be sure to exercise it with a disk utility to map out bad sectors. Dust in floppy drives is a notorious cause of problems, but is not likely to crash a system unless you have actually booted from a floppy. If the boot block of a floppy is corrupted, inserting the floppy into the drive can crash your machine. It is possible for third party monitors to change resolution and have your machine be unusable. This isn't really a crash, it is the inability to see what is on the screen or to change the setting back to a value that will let you use the system again. If you run into this problem you will probably want to read about Changing a Macintosh Monitor Resolution If you feel that your modem is interacting with your machine to cause crashes, you may want to learn more about modems and check the settings using a reference page such as the one from Yale or IndexSite. The end of this section is for the hardware savvy only. Apple considers most internal personal hardware troubleshooting to be inadvisable. Do so only at your own risk! Be sure to discharge any body static by touching a safe metal ground point after opening a Mac. DIMM memory contacts may be cleaned with a pencil eraser and reseated. A safer approach is to test the memory continuously with a RAM diagnostic program like RAMometer for several hours. If you feel comfortable removing DIMMs, you can more directly verify third-party memory is not faulty by selectively removing/swapping banks of memory. If a sad Mac code shows up on the screen just below the icon, use it to locate a bad module as discussed below. You can remove memory modules one at a time rather than in banks. For a Mac with a cache DIMM or board, you can try firmly reseating, removing or replacing it as needed. This can simplify your troubleshooting. If you have third party memory on a PowerMac, ask your vendor if you might have installed an incompatible kind of composite RAM by mistake. Power Macs are particularly susceptible to error 11 and sometimes it is caused by defective or incompatible memory. If you need more information about which memory and options are found on your model, ask the GURU. If you have a PowerMac with a L2 RAM cache card, you can try removing it to see if the error 11 rate goes down or simply test it with diagnostic software like TechTool Pro. If you have an accelerator add-in card, you can try restoring your earlier configuration to see if the problem vanishes. When starting your machine, if you don't even hear the fan motor or the power cuts out unexpectedly, you might want to check your battery. The more current Maintosh models use a battery holder. A leaky dead lithium battery can seriously damage a mother board with acid, so it should be replaced promptly. If a cell marked 3 V or 3.6 V tests below 3.3 V, it is probably gone or well on the way (Apple says 3.0 to the public and 3.2 to its service people). Testing the battery while it is still in the machine is recommended. The tiny nibs on the battery cover break off very easily. A new cover can be ordered with a replacement battery from Prefix Technologies at (800) 264-2530. A machine with a dead battery may not boot at all unless you put in a new battery or jump start it (techies only). Information from the Macintosh Battery Web Page or the Macintosh Motherboard Battery Page may also be of help. Jeremy Kezer has written several battery utilities. If you have any optional items plugged into your motherboard sockets, try reseating, removing or replacing them as availability allows. When Macs Go Sad If all attempts yield only the failure tone and a "Sad Mac", check the screen code for a clue about what has gone awry. According to the Macintosh Guide, the 10 most common sad Mac causes are: Corrupted Boot Blocks (Use your favorite hard disk utility to install new drivers) Corrupted System File (Reinstall the file) Corrupted Finder File (Reinstall the file) Problematic SCSI Chain (Double check your cabling and termination, check it internally, if needed.) Faulty or incorrectly installed memory chips (Reseat, rotate, or replace the modules) Faulty or incorrectly installed expansion cards (Reseat or replace the board) Physically damaged hard drive (Swap it out if you choose or use command-option-shift-delete) Physically damaged motherboard (check for resistor-like fuses with markings such as F1 or F2) Physically damaged power supply (sometimes there is a fuse hidden inside) For a Macintosh that boots and displays a "Sad Mac" immediately, the problem is probably caused by either faulty hardware, corrupted boot blocks or corrupted system files. The hardware problem may be bad memory. The crash sound or 'failure tone' varies dramatically by model. You may hear a simple chime, a dirge, bongos or an auto crash as detailed by Marvin's Sanctum. Ironically enough, playing these .aiff sounds may crash your computer! If this happens to you, be sure that you have the current version of your browser and are using only sound plug-ins that were bundled with it. If the file still crashes your machine, your browser vendor needs to get some e-mail detailing the problem. Early Mac LC/Quadra QuadraAV PowerMac DozeMystery Otherwise, find a Macintosh Dealer. If you like to fix things and have an very old machine, get a copy of The Dead Mac Scrolls by Larry Pina if you can find one. For pre-1996 machines, you can use Upgrading and Repairing your Mac by Lisa Lee. For G3s and G4s try Troubleshooting, Maintaining, and Repairing Macs by Ryan J. Faas. On-line you can read the hardware FAQs. Authorized Macintosh dealers do not normally make board level repairs. They swap boards. This practice can be very expensive since there are so few boards. If there is critical data on a crashed hard drive, be sure you tell the technician. Or, even if there is another cause for the machine problem, inform the tech if valuable information is contained on the drive. Then, if the only option is to reformat the drive, you will be notified in advance. If you are willing to pay a premium price for a data recovery service to try to retrieve it, tell the technician that, too. A data recovery service may advise you NOT to run disk doctor software, because it will lessen their chance of recovering the data with the custom software that they use. Total Recall sells a data recovery software for legacy machines. Many companies offer products that claim to retrieve deleted files, most do not work all that well, buyer beware. Call a professional service if your business hangs in the balance. If you are an educational user or you have a new machine that is under 90-day warranty, Apple can be reached for their free advice at (800) SOS-APPL. Sometimes if they aren't too busy, you might be able to get a little free advice. Intro | Freezes | Crashes | Hardware | Finder | Desktop | Troubleshooting Links Extension Conflicts/Bugs Extensions and control panels are files that appear as icons at the bottom of your screen when you startup your Macintosh. The more you have installed, the bigger the chance that one will not get along with another and you will start to have freezes, crashes or other unpredictable behavior either during the startup process or later when you are running programs. These files are found in special folders that live inside the System Folder. Which of these files are in use is normally controlled by extension manager software. Turn off all extensions using either an extension manager or by holding down the shift key during the boot process. If this solves the problem, then you need to zero in on recently installed or enabled extensions. If not, you may still want to pursue this line of attack, since some extensions are not diabled this way. ATI extensions have been known to cause serious conflicts and may not disabled with the shift key. Assuming the shift key did solve your problem, you can use a systematic 'divide and conquer' troubleshooting technique with an extension manager. Extensions load after the system, any enablers, or fonts in an order determined by your extension manager, usually alphabetic within category. Control Panels Load after the Extensions. Apple's Extension Manager has a convenient grouping called "Mac OS Base" that helps the beginning user distinguish essential Apple extensions from third party software, no small task these days (see the Conflict Catcher or ExtensionOverload for an explanation of what is what). The step by step visual appearance of the icons as they load may give a clue to which one of them failed to load or function correctly. The last icon to show up at the time of crashing may give another clue as to which extension caused the crash. If your icons are not labeled with the name of the extension as they march across the screen, you can try using Conflict Catcher which allows you to see the names. Another twist is that on rare occasions the order in which two extensions load may be critical. A way to force this to happen is to rename one of them, since loading is alphabetic or to use an extension manager that lets you control the loading order. Bear in mind that the most difficult problems to solve are those where two different problems occur simultaneously masking each other with a similar symptom. If you know that no new extensions have been installed recently and that your current configuration has been stable, it is possible that a preference file from one of your extensions has become corrupt. This is easy to check because you can simply temporarily drag the preferences folder onto the desktop and try to restart again with your normal extensions on. If your problem disappears, you can look inside the newly created Preferences folder inside the System Folder and decide which of the preference files there would normally contain critical infomation and which are of no consequence. A careful sorting process will probably get you running again. Running a shareware program like FileBuddy before you start this whole process can help weed out totally useless preference files for applications no longer in use. PrefsCleaner and Yank are two other programs devoted to eliminating unneeded preferences and they can be found in the MacFixit Download Library. Note that applications like QuicKeys and Netscape keep important files in the preferences folder that may be irreplacable if deleted. At worst you may find that you have to get one or two replacements from a backup volume or recreate it them by reentering the needed data. If you directly delete a preference file for an extension, it is best to do it with the extension off. One specific file that can become corrupt and is expendible is the MacTCP DNR file created automatically by Apple's MacTCP control panel. It does not live in the preferences folder, but lays loose in the System Folder. It does not contain manually entered settings. Conflict Catcher from Casady and Greene at (888) 227-2394 will help spot some incompatibilities automatically, and other suspicions to check can be deduced from the list of traps in its report. Since Conflict Catcher loads before any other extensions, you have the benefit of its help early in the boot process. Conflict Catcher has many fine features that outshine Apple's freebie. It often detect and disable problematic extensions. If you have installed software recently and an Installer Cleanup extension persists after several boots, you may want to disable it or erase it manually after booting. If turning off your extensions eliminated your problems and you want ideas of individual items you can turn off that commonly cause problems, you can try items from the list below first. Make sure Easy Access is disabled (throw it away if you don't use it) Turn File Sharing, AppleTalk and Virtual Memory off if you happen to have them on. Errors 1, 2 and 3 are commonly seen from corrupt or buggy extensions. Such errors may not show up until you actually launch an application and may show as error 11 if you run a PowerMac. Be especially suspicious about ever allowing two extensions to run on your system simultaneously that do very similar things, like DOS Mounter and PC Access, or Suitcase and Font Juggler. They may both patch the same area of code in the System in a way that is incompatible. WYSIWYG menu utilities and screen savers are particularly egregious in this area. If certain extensions refuse to load that have worked perfectly in the past and you are on a network, the problem may be a form of copy protection in those extensions that requires a unique serial number for each copy of the software on the network. You can remove your network cable before you boot the machine to test for this and reconnect it later. For applications, it usually sufficient to just turn off AppleTalk. If you don't see any extensions load before your machine gives up and you have ruled out hardware problems, remember that fonts load before extensions. If you can boot from alternate media and move any non-Apple fonts out of the Fonts folder, this may save the day. On PowerMacs any critical fonts are in ROM, so you can test by dragging the whole Font Folder out of the System Folder. Since corrupt fonts can cause a machine to crash, you may want a tool from Insider Software called FontAgent to fix them. The transition to System 8.6 introduced a bug that corrupts fonts. The bug is fixed by Apple's Font Manager Update 1.0 and the fonts are fixed by CorruptFONDFixer from Alsoft. A way to avoid this issue is to use a font management tool like Suitcase or ATM. If you insist on running lots of fonts and do not have a commercial font manager, you can try to track down name and ID conflicts with shareware like Font Box. Apple has never been able to make up their mind what constitutes a minimal bootable system folder: OS 6.x, / 7.x System & Finder OS 8.0 / 8.1 System & Finder & Appearance Extension OS 8.5.x / 8.6 System & Finder & Text Encoding Converter OS 9.x System & Finder & Mac OS ROM Try running Help! from MacPitstop if you own that older product. It will make suggestions about incompatibilities that it finds. Older applications may not behave with file sharing or virtual memory on and may require compatibility mode to be on if you have a 68040 based Mac like a Centris or Quadra. Intro | Freezes | Crashes | Hardware | Extensions | Desktop | Troubleshooting Links Finder/Desktop Integrity The Finder loads in the period after extensions and control panels have marched across the bottom of your screen, but before menus and desktop icons appear. If you freeze with a blank menu bar at startup, you may be able to get to the desktop if you just hold down the option key during this period the next time you restart the machine. If this works, be sure to rebuild the desktop by whatever method you choose from those described below. Also note that if the Finder Preferences file becomes corrupt, you may not be able to get to the desktop unless you delete it. This is also a good tonic if you experience frequent freezes or strange error messages in the Finder. You can hold down the command and option keys during the boot period that follows extension loading to rebuild your desktop. This method may be more effective if you restart with extensions off. Better yet you can use a program that erases the desktop file(s) like the shareware programs TechTool or File Buddy . A desktop rebuild may discard any comments seen in your Get Info boxes unless you use a method known to preserve them, like TechTool. It can be very disappointing to find that the nice URL pathnames that Netscape has put in the comment box when you save a file have disappeared. The Generic Icon Page contains more detailed information about the desktop file. If you get a Finder Error 11 and have a Desktop Printer Icon present on the desktop, you may want to drag it into the trash. It can become corrupt over time. If you have eliminated the suggestions listed above in tracking down Finder errors, there is one more thing to consider before replacing the System and Finder. Sometimes the operation of the Finder is modified or superceded by other software that mask themselves as Finder errors. Speed Doubler and CyberFinder come to mind. If you double-click on a corrupt bookmark file with CyberFinder enabled, the System can crash with a Finder error through no fault of the Finder.If you can boot from alternate media, but not the your boot drive and have already checked the drive directory structure with a hard disk utility, you can try to install a fresh System and Finder from a backup after removing the old ones or stashing them each in a separate folder. If this fails it is time to think about a Clean-Install. Clean-Install A clean-install is a way to flush out corrupt system software and preferences in one fell swoop without a lot of tedious dinkering with hundreds of little files. With a clean-install you are choosing to install a brand new System Folder instead of updating an existing System Folder. The old System Folder will be renamed to Previous System Folder if it had been named with Apple's standard "System Folder" otherwise the name will remain unchanged. As with most installs it is best to turn off security software, virus software, file sharing and any non-Apple extensions using a setting like Mac OS All on your favorite extensions manager, then reboot. Starting with Mac OS 8, the choice to do a clean install is made with the first option button you encounter in the installation process (rather than the old hidden option-K method). Conflict Catcher from Casady & Greene now features a Clean Install System Merge feature, which keeps incorrect files, extensions, and preferences from merging into your new operating system. If you don't have Conflict Catcher, Clean-Install Assistant can be a great help in sorting out files as a first step before the Apple installer is run. It can normally prevent you from having to do a reinstall from factory media of your third party software. Apple has added a new twist with Mac OS 9.1 and above. If you try to boot to a bootable install CD by restarting the machine and holding down the C key, it will not work. You have to have a running machine and use the Startup Disk control panel to boot to the CD. If your hard drive is sick and it won't let you boot, you may be out of luck. If you have an alternate cartridge or hard drive that allows bootable volumes, you can try booting to that device using command-option-shift-delete. Some users may be wondering just what versions of the MacOS are compatible with which Macintosh models and there is very little comprehensive information to be found on the web about this very basic topic. The secret is to look up the processor that is inside your Macintosh (e.g. by using the Apple System Profiler) or by checking our chart. Once you know this you can lookup that chip in a Mac OS chip chart. If you ever wondered what visible (and invisible) files are placed on your drive by those installers that do not supply an installation log, you can run Installer Observer before the install and again after you have run the program once and entered your information. Intro | Freezes | Crashes | Hardware | Extensions | Finder | Troubleshooting Links When you get to the Desktop The most important thing to do when you get to the desktop is to run your favorite disk doctor program. Both directories and files can become unexplainedly corrupt and will need occasional repair or replacement from your backups. If a diagnostic program says it fixed something, run it again and see if it really did. If it didn't, consider booting from an alternate drive and running it again. Running diagnostic programs from bootable media is an important safety consideration, especially if the number of errors reported is more than a handful. If the hard drive contains your only copy of critical data, back that data up to external media as your first priority. Run the most recent version of a virus program like Virex from Mcafee or Norton AntiVirus from Symantec from locked media if you are exposed to files from the outside world and don't screen them. The Virex program can even be configured to check files as you download them. The virus checkers for the Macintosh will not check for the FBI Magic Lantern worm used to capture your keystrokes and forward them. The FBI is withholding technical information on the worm and Symantec has decided not to protect against it and it would appear Mcafee has questionable motives. Sophos will protect against it, but only on the PC. If the problem is application specific, reinstall the suspect program(s) after verifying that you have a large enough memory allocated (the preferred size in the Get Info Box). Virtual memory may help you get by for testing purposes, if you don't have this much available memory shown in your About This Macintosh box at the top of the Apple menu. Be sure to try allocating more memory if you have an application that will consistently quit unexpectedly with a message to that effect. It doesn't hurt to allocate an extra fifty percent more memory that the preferred size as a performance experiment. Amazing results can be had with such a simple trick. Turning virtual memory on can also give a performance boost for the PowerMac. There is a very patient and detailed memory allocation explanation in the MacBible (Download) troubleshooting section "What Are All Those Error Codes Anyway?" If you tend to use lots of PostScript fonts in a single document as you would in a specimen book, it may be necessary to increase the font cache in the Adobe Type Manager control panel. Third party filters and plug-ins can be a subtle source of crashes. If you are troubleshooting an application that crashes and has add-ons, try removing them and replacing them in small groups as if you were looking for an extension conflict. When you upgrade to a new version of a product, you may need to upgrade any third party software as well. For Example, an older extension like RealAudio running with Netscape 4.0 may conflict with the bundled LiveAudio that is now included with Netscape 6.0 Certain applications may not be well-behaved with file sharing or virtual memory on. The documenation for such programs will normally warn of this unless they are older programs. Deleting the associated preferences file may be sufficient to fix an application. Such files are normally found in the Preferences folder which can be found in the System Folder. View the contents of your Preferences Folder by date and consider which recently changed files, if any, might be contributing to your problem. Certain applications, like Quark, tend to need this kind of attention more often than others. If this gets to be a nuisance, keep a spare backup copy of the worst offenders. Be sure to put key files from your Netscape preferences folder on on your backup too, like your preferences, bookmarks and global history if you feel they are valuable to you. Remember that many extension conflicts do not actually show up until you begin to launch applications. They commonly manifest as error 11 on PowerMacs. If you boot with just a set of minimal Apple extensions on and experience no problems at all, then be very suspicious of an underlying extension conflict or bug. There are several applications with printable error charts like Black & Bleu and YER. The most explanatory lists, however, are on internet web pages. I think the nicest is Macintosh-System Error Codes Explained. In real life charts are a poor way to pin down problems because they can seldom give useful advice on just what to do to eliminate the error. Most of the time error codes are really there to help programmers fix bugs, not to help users. Be sure to mention the EXACT text of an error message if you contact technical support personnel about your problem. An error code may help you know that the same problem is recurring. If you get an error 26 (Bad Program Launch), your application program may be corrupt. If you get other error numbers in the range 15-31, be suspicious of corrupt system software. The rest of the time your errors are likely to be hardware problems, conflicts, bugs or memory allocation issues. Occasionally you may run into errors that appear when you add or reconfigure SCSI devices. Power Macs are particularly susceptible to error 11. You might try SoftwareFPU from John Neil & Associates at (800) 663-2943 though it might make things run slower depending on which product you use. Installation of this and other JNA products can override hardware trapping of certain errors. Check for and eliminate duplicate System and Finder files on your system drive. If you want to store a copy of your working System or Finder on your hard drive, keep it in compressed form or be sure that the two files live in separate folders. There is a handy little program called Memory Mapper (66K) which gives a labeled picture of everything that is currently running on your computer. Similar programs are Peek-a-Boo .Symbionts, Process Watcher and YAPI.There may be several invisible things that will not show up in the application menu that you are unaware of, even things that could be malicious. Memory Mapper will be a tattle tale for you and let you know other things to turn off that you have not thought of. Memory is sometimes not released in the optimal way dictated by good programming practice. If you are suspicous that this might be causing you problems, give MacOS Purge a try. The heap under System 9 is not as troublesome it used to be in earlier versions. Many utilities have been written over the years to compress the heap. Be sure the date on the utilities is close to the date on your system software and that the readme file tells you what system the software was tested on. Some of the more current programs are called Reaper and Substitute. Heap error reports from Conflict Catcher are discussed here. SystemSentry and ApplicationSentry monitor the memory requirements of your computer and can help you determine which activities lead to memory-related problems. If you notice a pattern of crashes with error 84, 87, 88, or 89 on OS 8.1 or earlier, run the shareware Crash Less Often Reporter to see if any of them fail to purge the WDEF resource. If so, you might try using the shareware WDEF Leopard extension for a while. If nothing else has worked so far, you can try giving the System Folder a different name. Then move the contents to a newly created folder that you name System Folder. Bless it (make the Mac icon visible) by opening it and closing it even if you can see the icon already. If that fails, try dragging the System and Finder out of the System Folder, and then drag them back on top of the folder icon and drop them in again. You can zap the PRAM especially if you have been getting error 10 or 11 repeatedly by pressing option-command-p-r (simultaneously) continously at startup until the machine has restarted at least three times. If you have a PCI Mac, it is important to press the keys as soon as possible after you press the power key so as to reset both the PRAM and the NVRAM. TechTool can store/restore a set of working PRAM values that you know are stable (but not the NVRAM). If your symptoms persist and you are convinced the PRAM is the cause, you might try removing your battery for 20 minutes with the machine unplugged. If your machine can't seem to hold onto the date or time PRAM settings, it is time to check your battery. If your battery checks out okay, but daily zapping of the PRAM is necessary to keep your machine running well, you might want to look around inside the computer case to see if a stray loose object is shorting out something. When a program crashes, unpredictable things can happen. PRAMs, boot blocks, and disk directories can be corrupted. You might also want to know about PRAM Battery Checker & PRAM Inspector. Certain PowerMac models (like the 7500 and 8500) have a special tiny cuda button on the motherboard that performs a PRAM reset that is even more rigorous than is possible with software. This button can be pressed if a software PRAM zap fails to help. If your screen is black, but the powerlight is on, this may bring your monitor back to life. TWILIGHT ZONE: "We completely destroyed a 8500/120, simply by playing a 1 KHz tone using SoundEdit v1.6. While playing the tone, the system locked up, and upon restart, would not power on, and was totally dead."--Scott H. Richardson (a Systems Administrator for Motorola) via MacFixIt If your trouble is that you are responsible for a remote machine, the most useful software approach is probably Autoboot, It reboots the machine, when an error dialog box appears. It can be used with Keep It Up, which checks to see if a critical application quits unexpectedly and relaunches it if needed. Rebound combines software and hardware for a more complete solution. Many other such programs exist and one called Okey Dokey is handy for logging and dismissing dialog boxes that might stall a machine. Logging the applications that have been running is done by YooZ and Detective. In a final act of desperation you can reformat your system hard drive. If you have an alternate drive that you can run from for a while, you may be able to learn whether the original hard drive is really the problem. Otherwise backup all your files and be sure you have a method to boot to a working drive with the software you will use to restore these files. IMPORTANT! Don't overlook recording any serial numbers that you may need to reinstall files or applications. Also, record the file count, so you can double check the number of files backed up with the number of files restored. If you decide to reformat your hard drive, use the most current version of a good hard drive formatting utility. For Apple hard disk drives, you may use Apple's free Drive Setup utility. For non-Apple drives programs like Silver Lining or Hard Disk Toolkit can be used. Once formatted, existing files are gone for good. If you use a backup program, do a trial restore of sample files to a test drive before you trash the original source files by formatting the drive. Install fresh system software from a CD or locked factory floppies, then restore any remaining files needed for your work except any FileSaver or Prevention data files and/or any suspicious preference files. Test each program and extension to see that they all work. Apple's code word for crashing is "stability". Invariably Apple will claim that each new version of the Mac OS that they release is more stable than the last. Maybe yes, maybe no, it depends on just how much you want to bleed. Living on the bleeding edge is for people whose job does not depend on such stability. Conventional wisdom dictates that no one should buy and begin to use a new version of an operating system for at least six months, preferably a year while developers catch up. There will always be plenty of extremists willing to put the distribution CD to their temple and pull the trigger, you don't have to join them, but you can learn a lot from the running dialog of their mistakes on MacFixit.com. If you are doing a first time install of a more recent version of the system, be sure to check with vendors of any third party software or hardware you own for compatibility. Many out-of-business companies are unavailable to provide drivers or other support needed to run older products originally made for earlier systems. Be aware that newer systems are designed to run best on faster machines. They may take more memory, run slower, and be generally less responsive than earlier systems. This is aggravated substantially on the web by the amount of crash prone software in use (e.g. Netscape and Explorer). When you run out of ideas and need to contact technical support, you may find that they would like the courtesy of a detailed system profile. Many profilers have come and gone over the years, and Apple has bundled the Apple System Profiler with recent versions of the Mac OS. TattleTech, ExtractIt and TechTool can be found on the web at shareware sites. They are necessary because the Apple System Profiler reports can only be generated on certain Powerbook, Proforma, and PowerMac models.There is a PCI card profiler called MegaWolf PCI Tool and another called PCIProber. If you have a machine that crashes a lot and you have decided to live with it rather than have it fixed, you might like to try some software palatives. The FileSaver control panel that comes with Norton Utilities helps keep track of files that are candidates for undelete. There is a similar feature in TechTool Pro that actually caches deleted files in a hidden folder if you have lots of disk space. MacPitstop offers two programs MacMedic plus Search & Rescue to help with file recovery. Wildbits also offers Data Rescue. If you think it is possible that your computer might be crashing because of an outside attack directed at you via the internet, you can try the free on-line Symantec Security Check. If all this sounds too technical for you, unless you have a knowledgeable computer friend (not me), you will probably have to use a technical repair facility. Ask for an estimate of what it may cost to keep from being surprised later on. Don't forget to ask about the possibility of extended warrantee service. Again, if you are an educational user or you have a new machine that is under 90-day warranty, Apple can be reached for their free advice at (800) SOS-APPL. Their Customer Support Program options are listed in a press release explaining the termination of their free telephone support. Crashing systems are dramas that can go on for days, if you are in a hurry, go pay someone else to fix it. Good Luck (and don't write me about it, I just told you what I know on these pages.) Intro | Freezes | Crashes | Hardware | Extensions | Finder | Desktop | Links HOME Email to crashtips@crashtips.com (not for personal advice) updated 12/2001 The information on this page may be used and distributed freely in electronic form, so long as its source is cited. Any trademarks mentioned on these pages are the property of the respective trademark owners. Disclaimer: These ideas are for informational purposes only and constitute neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. CrashTips assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance, or use of these products or vendors. All understandings, agreements, or warranties, if any, take place directly between the vendors and the prospective users. CrashTips makes no warranties as to the completeness or accuracy of this information. What you do to your computer is your choice and your risk. If you are a film "fogger" or streetlights go out when you walk by them, it may simply be best not to use a computer. Our best information comes from you the reader to promote informed self-help for others. The ideas expressed are merely opinions of the author and generous contributors to this page. Click every day to help the hungry.
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When does it happen?
1) Before the extensions load (more than likely a Hardware Issue)
2) During extension loading (probably one of many possible Extension Conflicts/Bugs)
3) After extensions load when the finder starts (check Finder/Desktop Integrity)
4) After the menus and desktop icons appear (see: When you get to the Desktop)
IMPORTANT! Try to recall whether the problem first became apparent with the installation or enabling of new software or hardware. If so, start there. For example, if you had virus detection software turned ON during a recent install, it could have seriously affected your machine and caused your current problem.
Keep a log of your freezes and crashes and record exactly what you were doing and what exact sequence led up to the problem. Then record what you tried and if it worked. Patterns can emerge that will help both you and any technical support people you may deal with later. Two little known programs called Detective and Yooz will automatically log the programs you use and they are launched and quit. Studying the logs might help you remember your usage and crash patterns
Newer models that ship with the rainbow colored candy-cane style power cords are prone to having a defective power cable. If the Energy Saver Control Panel is set to Restart automatically after power fail and you here the startup tone each time your machine crashes, try swapping out the power cord for the processor. If that doesn't work try a different outlet.
If you use any SCSI peripherals, you may want to unplug the SCSI cable after powering down and then try to restart. The SCSI cable is a heavy wire at least as thick as the power wire that plugs into a 25 pin connector on the rear of your Mac marked by a disk drive icon. If you have recently added a new SCSI device, you should be aware that each peripheral added to the SCSI bus must have a unique ID address number that is usually set by a switch on the back of each the peripheral device itself. The number ranges from zero to six. Zero is normally used as the ID for the internal drive. Make sure there are no duplicate IDs and also that there is a terminator plug installed on the last item in the chain unless internally terminated. A good rule of thumb is to have the highest ID numbers assigned to the fastest peripherals. If you have them or can borrow or buy some, try fresh, short, high quality (thick, gold-plated connectors) cables. Sometimes getting a chain of SCSI devices to work is a black art of trial and error. Be sure you never have two devices in a chain that are both internally terminated. Sometimes changing the device order or temporarily removing items in the chain can help. The total length of the combined SCSI cables should not be over twenty feet. A mounter control panel like SCSI Probe is very helplful. Many other companies bundle a mounter into their offerings like FWB Software and LaCie (Silverlining). LoadADrive will even let you mount a CD if you had the extensions turned off during startup
If you can successfully restart from bootable media, you might try Disk First Aid for starters. If the program terminates with an error message, try running it a second time, just in case. If this is not sufficient you can then try your favorite disk doctor, also from bootable media.
CAUTION: If you have a 5200, 6200, 7200 or 7500 Power Mac of early manufacture, it is possible for older versions of Norton Disk Doctor to accidentally erase your entire hard drive. To fix this problem, Symantec has released a special free utility called Disk Spot Check which is no longer available. This stark example points up the danger of running the first model or release of any new hardware or software product.
Another useful procedure is to update the disk drivers in your boot blocks on the system disk drive. You can use Apple's Drive Setup if you own an Apple drive. If you use Silver Lining from LaCie, it will tell you if your disk drivers need updating. Both SCSI Director Pro (now discontinued) from Transoft and HDT Toolkit from FWB Software are serialized, so you may end up crippled in your hour of need. FWB's toolkit is frequently unable to update the drivers in any case. Be sure your copy of any such programs is current and ready to run. It is best to prepare a working copy of your favorite hard disk formatting utility on bootable media in advance, just in case. Once you choose formatting software, stick with one program if you use it on removable media.
NOTE: A floppy disk with bad boot blocks can crash a machine instantly, just by inserting it into the drive. Another problem for System 7 and above users is 400K floppies. Lock the diskette! You cannot rename a 400K floppy disk, create a new file folder or even see folders!
Be aware that command-option-shift-delete will keep the internal hard drive from mounting during a restart while test-booting from an alternate drive. If your machine has a CD-ROM drive and you have any bootable CDs, you may want to try holding down the "C" key at the beginning of the restart process to test whether you can boot from a CD. If you set the Startup Disk control panel to boot from another device, remember to set it back to your internal drive once it is running again. If you don't, your boot time may slow down.
At some point in your examination of the machine, with the power OFF, try unplugging all cables. Examine all connectors for bent, corroded or receding pins.
First, reattach only the keyboard, mouse and Monitor, then reboot. Examine the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) with the Focus BusTool utility if the keyboard or mouse are behaving erratically or not functioning at all. It will scan all 16 ADB ports and list the ones that are active, if only one shows up, something is wrong! It will also let you reset the bus. A defective mouse or keyboard can cause a machine to crash, so if you can temporarily test your machine with a different set known to be working, it may help to isolate the problem. Be sure to try fresh cables in the process. If the machine does not see an ADB device on a regular basis, you can also try Mouse Jolt. If your keyboard and mouse are the newer USB devices found on G3's and G4's instead of the older ADB style, then there is a developer tool called USB prober that is of more limited use, but will give a list of recognized devices.
If you think you problems may be related to your serial port you might want to play with the free PortPeek or SerialCheck tools.
Overheating is a potential problem on models that have a defective fan. You will have to be the one to find out whether the blade is spinning. There may be a separate fan mounted on top of the processor chip. For G3s or G4s there is a nifty utility called Thermograph that plots processor temperature. An overheated floppy drive can cause a crash, showing Errors 10 or 15. If this happens you might notice whether your fan is running and whether the weather is exceptionally hot. If the floppy is external, you can try pointing a fan at it.
If you suspect a hardware problem, try running TechTool Pro from Micromat at (800) 829-6227. Use it on bootable media, if your hard drive won't boot. If your floppy or hard disk has given read or write errors, be sure to exercise it with a disk utility to map out bad sectors. Dust in floppy drives is a notorious cause of problems, but is not likely to crash a system unless you have actually booted from a floppy. If the boot block of a floppy is corrupted, inserting the floppy into the drive can crash your machine.
It is possible for third party monitors to change resolution and have your machine be unusable. This isn't really a crash, it is the inability to see what is on the screen or to change the setting back to a value that will let you use the system again. If you run into this problem you will probably want to read about Changing a Macintosh Monitor Resolution
If you feel that your modem is interacting with your machine to cause crashes, you may want to learn more about modems and check the settings using a reference page such as the one from Yale or IndexSite.
Apple considers most internal personal hardware troubleshooting to be inadvisable. Do so only at your own risk! Be sure to discharge any body static by touching a safe metal ground point after opening a Mac.
DIMM memory contacts may be cleaned with a pencil eraser and reseated. A safer approach is to test the memory continuously with a RAM diagnostic program like RAMometer for several hours. If you feel comfortable removing DIMMs, you can more directly verify third-party memory is not faulty by selectively removing/swapping banks of memory. If a sad Mac code shows up on the screen just below the icon, use it to locate a bad module as discussed below.
You can remove memory modules one at a time rather than in banks. For a Mac with a cache DIMM or board, you can try firmly reseating, removing or replacing it as needed. This can simplify your troubleshooting. If you have third party memory on a PowerMac, ask your vendor if you might have installed an incompatible kind of composite RAM by mistake. Power Macs are particularly susceptible to error 11 and sometimes it is caused by defective or incompatible memory. If you need more information about which memory and options are found on your model, ask the GURU.
If you have a PowerMac with a L2 RAM cache card, you can try removing it to see if the error 11 rate goes down or simply test it with diagnostic software like TechTool Pro.
If you have an accelerator add-in card, you can try restoring your earlier configuration to see if the problem vanishes.
When starting your machine, if you don't even hear the fan motor or the power cuts out unexpectedly, you might want to check your battery. The more current Maintosh models use a battery holder. A leaky dead lithium battery can seriously damage a mother board with acid, so it should be replaced promptly. If a cell marked 3 V or 3.6 V tests below 3.3 V, it is probably gone or well on the way (Apple says 3.0 to the public and 3.2 to its service people). Testing the battery while it is still in the machine is recommended. The tiny nibs on the battery cover break off very easily. A new cover can be ordered with a replacement battery from Prefix Technologies at (800) 264-2530. A machine with a dead battery may not boot at all unless you put in a new battery or jump start it (techies only). Information from the Macintosh Battery Web Page or the Macintosh Motherboard Battery Page may also be of help. Jeremy Kezer has written several battery utilities.
If you have any optional items plugged into your motherboard sockets, try reseating, removing or replacing them as availability allows.
If all attempts yield only the failure tone and a "Sad Mac", check the screen code for a clue about what has gone awry. According to the Macintosh Guide, the 10 most common sad Mac causes are:
Corrupted Boot Blocks (Use your favorite hard disk utility to install new drivers)
Corrupted System File (Reinstall the file)
Corrupted Finder File (Reinstall the file)
Problematic SCSI Chain (Double check your cabling and termination, check it internally, if needed.)
Faulty or incorrectly installed memory chips (Reseat, rotate, or replace the modules)
Faulty or incorrectly installed expansion cards (Reseat or replace the board)
Physically damaged hard drive (Swap it out if you choose or use command-option-shift-delete)
Physically damaged motherboard (check for resistor-like fuses with markings such as F1 or F2)
Physically damaged power supply (sometimes there is a fuse hidden inside)
For a Macintosh that boots and displays a "Sad Mac" immediately, the problem is probably caused by either faulty hardware, corrupted boot blocks or corrupted system files. The hardware problem may be bad memory. The crash sound or 'failure tone' varies dramatically by model. You may hear a simple chime, a dirge, bongos or an auto crash as detailed by Marvin's Sanctum. Ironically enough, playing these .aiff sounds may crash your computer! If this happens to you, be sure that you have the current version of your browser and are using only sound plug-ins that were bundled with it. If the file still crashes your machine, your browser vendor needs to get some e-mail detailing the problem. Early Mac LC/Quadra QuadraAV PowerMac DozeMystery
Otherwise, find a Macintosh Dealer. If you like to fix things and have an very old machine, get a copy of The Dead Mac Scrolls by Larry Pina if you can find one. For pre-1996 machines, you can use Upgrading and Repairing your Mac by Lisa Lee. For G3s and G4s try Troubleshooting, Maintaining, and Repairing Macs by Ryan J. Faas. On-line you can read the hardware FAQs. Authorized Macintosh dealers do not normally make board level repairs. They swap boards. This practice can be very expensive since there are so few boards.
If there is critical data on a crashed hard drive, be sure you tell the technician. Or, even if there is another cause for the machine problem, inform the tech if valuable information is contained on the drive. Then, if the only option is to reformat the drive, you will be notified in advance. If you are willing to pay a premium price for a data recovery service to try to retrieve it, tell the technician that, too. A data recovery service may advise you NOT to run disk doctor software, because it will lessen their chance of recovering the data with the custom software that they use. Total Recall sells a data recovery software for legacy machines. Many companies offer products that claim to retrieve deleted files, most do not work all that well, buyer beware. Call a professional service if your business hangs in the balance.
If you are an educational user or you have a new machine that is under 90-day warranty, Apple can be reached for their free advice at (800) SOS-APPL. Sometimes if they aren't too busy, you might be able to get a little free advice.
Extensions and control panels are files that appear as icons at the bottom of your screen when you startup your Macintosh. The more you have installed, the bigger the chance that one will not get along with another and you will start to have freezes, crashes or other unpredictable behavior either during the startup process or later when you are running programs. These files are found in special folders that live inside the System Folder. Which of these files are in use is normally controlled by extension manager software.
Turn off all extensions using either an extension manager or by holding down the shift key during the boot process. If this solves the problem, then you need to zero in on recently installed or enabled extensions. If not, you may still want to pursue this line of attack, since some extensions are not diabled this way. ATI extensions have been known to cause serious conflicts and may not disabled with the shift key. Assuming the shift key did solve your problem, you can use a systematic 'divide and conquer' troubleshooting technique with an extension manager. Extensions load after the system, any enablers, or fonts in an order determined by your extension manager, usually alphabetic within category. Control Panels Load after the Extensions. Apple's Extension Manager has a convenient grouping called "Mac OS Base" that helps the beginning user distinguish essential Apple extensions from third party software, no small task these days (see the Conflict Catcher or ExtensionOverload for an explanation of what is what). The step by step visual appearance of the icons as they load may give a clue to which one of them failed to load or function correctly. The last icon to show up at the time of crashing may give another clue as to which extension caused the crash. If your icons are not labeled with the name of the extension as they march across the screen, you can try using Conflict Catcher which allows you to see the names.
Another twist is that on rare occasions the order in which two extensions load may be critical. A way to force this to happen is to rename one of them, since loading is alphabetic or to use an extension manager that lets you control the loading order. Bear in mind that the most difficult problems to solve are those where two different problems occur simultaneously masking each other with a similar symptom.
If you know that no new extensions have been installed recently and that your current configuration has been stable, it is possible that a preference file from one of your extensions has become corrupt. This is easy to check because you can simply temporarily drag the preferences folder onto the desktop and try to restart again with your normal extensions on. If your problem disappears, you can look inside the newly created Preferences folder inside the System Folder and decide which of the preference files there would normally contain critical infomation and which are of no consequence. A careful sorting process will probably get you running again. Running a shareware program like FileBuddy before you start this whole process can help weed out totally useless preference files for applications no longer in use. PrefsCleaner and Yank are two other programs devoted to eliminating unneeded preferences and they can be found in the MacFixit Download Library. Note that applications like QuicKeys and Netscape keep important files in the preferences folder that may be irreplacable if deleted. At worst you may find that you have to get one or two replacements from a backup volume or recreate it them by reentering the needed data. If you directly delete a preference file for an extension, it is best to do it with the extension off.
One specific file that can become corrupt and is expendible is the MacTCP DNR file created automatically by Apple's MacTCP control panel. It does not live in the preferences folder, but lays loose in the System Folder. It does not contain manually entered settings.
Conflict Catcher from Casady and Greene at (888) 227-2394 will help spot some incompatibilities automatically, and other suspicions to check can be deduced from the list of traps in its report. Since Conflict Catcher loads before any other extensions, you have the benefit of its help early in the boot process. Conflict Catcher has many fine features that outshine Apple's freebie. It often detect and disable problematic extensions.
If you have installed software recently and an Installer Cleanup extension persists after several boots, you may want to disable it or erase it manually after booting.
If turning off your extensions eliminated your problems and you want ideas of individual items you can turn off that commonly cause problems, you can try items from the list below first.
Make sure Easy Access is disabled (throw it away if you don't use it)
Turn File Sharing, AppleTalk and Virtual Memory off if you happen to have them on.
Errors 1, 2 and 3 are commonly seen from corrupt or buggy extensions. Such errors may not show up until you actually launch an application and may show as error 11 if you run a PowerMac.
Be especially suspicious about ever allowing two extensions to run on your system simultaneously that do very similar things, like DOS Mounter and PC Access, or Suitcase and Font Juggler. They may both patch the same area of code in the System in a way that is incompatible. WYSIWYG menu utilities and screen savers are particularly egregious in this area.
If certain extensions refuse to load that have worked perfectly in the past and you are on a network, the problem may be a form of copy protection in those extensions that requires a unique serial number for each copy of the software on the network. You can remove your network cable before you boot the machine to test for this and reconnect it later. For applications, it usually sufficient to just turn off AppleTalk.
If you don't see any extensions load before your machine gives up and you have ruled out hardware problems, remember that fonts load before extensions. If you can boot from alternate media and move any non-Apple fonts out of the Fonts folder, this may save the day. On PowerMacs any critical fonts are in ROM, so you can test by dragging the whole Font Folder out of the System Folder. Since corrupt fonts can cause a machine to crash, you may want a tool from Insider Software called FontAgent to fix them. The transition to System 8.6 introduced a bug that corrupts fonts. The bug is fixed by Apple's Font Manager Update 1.0 and the fonts are fixed by CorruptFONDFixer from Alsoft.
A way to avoid this issue is to use a font management tool like Suitcase or ATM. If you insist on running lots of fonts and do not have a commercial font manager, you can try to track down name and ID conflicts with shareware like Font Box.
Apple has never been able to make up their mind what constitutes a minimal bootable system folder:
Try running Help! from MacPitstop if you own that older product. It will make suggestions about incompatibilities that it finds.
Older applications may not behave with file sharing or virtual memory on and may require compatibility mode to be on if you have a 68040 based Mac like a Centris or Quadra.
The Finder loads in the period after extensions and control panels have marched across the bottom of your screen, but before menus and desktop icons appear.
If you freeze with a blank menu bar at startup, you may be able to get to the desktop if you just hold down the option key during this period the next time you restart the machine. If this works, be sure to rebuild the desktop by whatever method you choose from those described below. Also note that if the Finder Preferences file becomes corrupt, you may not be able to get to the desktop unless you delete it. This is also a good tonic if you experience frequent freezes or strange error messages in the Finder.
You can hold down the command and option keys during the boot period that follows extension loading to rebuild your desktop. This method may be more effective if you restart with extensions off. Better yet you can use a program that erases the desktop file(s) like the shareware programs TechTool or File Buddy . A desktop rebuild may discard any comments seen in your Get Info boxes unless you use a method known to preserve them, like TechTool. It can be very disappointing to find that the nice URL pathnames that Netscape has put in the comment box when you save a file have disappeared. The Generic Icon Page contains more detailed information about the desktop file.
If you get a Finder Error 11 and have a Desktop Printer Icon present on the desktop, you may want to drag it into the trash. It can become corrupt over time.
If you have eliminated the suggestions listed above in tracking down Finder errors, there is one more thing to consider before replacing the System and Finder. Sometimes the operation of the Finder is modified or superceded by other software that mask themselves as Finder errors. Speed Doubler and CyberFinder come to mind. If you double-click on a corrupt bookmark file with CyberFinder enabled, the System can crash with a Finder error through no fault of the Finder.If you can boot from alternate media, but not the your boot drive and have already checked the drive directory structure with a hard disk utility, you can try to install a fresh System and Finder from a backup after removing the old ones or stashing them each in a separate folder. If this fails it is time to think about a Clean-Install.
A clean-install is a way to flush out corrupt system software and preferences in one fell swoop without a lot of tedious dinkering with hundreds of little files. With a clean-install you are choosing to install a brand new System Folder instead of updating an existing System Folder. The old System Folder will be renamed to Previous System Folder if it had been named with Apple's standard "System Folder" otherwise the name will remain unchanged.
As with most installs it is best to turn off security software, virus software, file sharing and any non-Apple extensions using a setting like Mac OS All on your favorite extensions manager, then reboot. Starting with Mac OS 8, the choice to do a clean install is made with the first option button you encounter in the installation process (rather than the old hidden option-K method).
Conflict Catcher from Casady & Greene now features a Clean Install System Merge feature, which keeps incorrect files, extensions, and preferences from merging into your new operating system. If you don't have Conflict Catcher, Clean-Install Assistant can be a great help in sorting out files as a first step before the Apple installer is run. It can normally prevent you from having to do a reinstall from factory media of your third party software.
Apple has added a new twist with Mac OS 9.1 and above. If you try to boot to a bootable install CD by restarting the machine and holding down the C key, it will not work. You have to have a running machine and use the Startup Disk control panel to boot to the CD. If your hard drive is sick and it won't let you boot, you may be out of luck. If you have an alternate cartridge or hard drive that allows bootable volumes, you can try booting to that device using command-option-shift-delete.
Some users may be wondering just what versions of the MacOS are compatible with which Macintosh models and there is very little comprehensive information to be found on the web about this very basic topic. The secret is to look up the processor that is inside your Macintosh (e.g. by using the Apple System Profiler) or by checking our chart. Once you know this you can lookup that chip in a Mac OS chip chart.
If you ever wondered what visible (and invisible) files are placed on your drive by those installers that do not supply an installation log, you can run Installer Observer before the install and again after you have run the program once and entered your information.
The most important thing to do when you get to the desktop is to run your favorite disk doctor program. Both directories and files can become unexplainedly corrupt and will need occasional repair or replacement from your backups. If a diagnostic program says it fixed something, run it again and see if it really did. If it didn't, consider booting from an alternate drive and running it again. Running diagnostic programs from bootable media is an important safety consideration, especially if the number of errors reported is more than a handful. If the hard drive contains your only copy of critical data, back that data up to external media as your first priority.
Run the most recent version of a virus program like Virex from Mcafee or Norton AntiVirus from Symantec from locked media if you are exposed to files from the outside world and don't screen them. The Virex program can even be configured to check files as you download them. The virus checkers for the Macintosh will not check for the FBI Magic Lantern worm used to capture your keystrokes and forward them. The FBI is withholding technical information on the worm and Symantec has decided not to protect against it and it would appear Mcafee has questionable motives. Sophos will protect against it, but only on the PC.
If the problem is application specific, reinstall the suspect program(s) after verifying that you have a large enough memory allocated (the preferred size in the Get Info Box). Virtual memory may help you get by for testing purposes, if you don't have this much available memory shown in your About This Macintosh box at the top of the Apple menu. Be sure to try allocating more memory if you have an application that will consistently quit unexpectedly with a message to that effect. It doesn't hurt to allocate an extra fifty percent more memory that the preferred size as a performance experiment. Amazing results can be had with such a simple trick. Turning virtual memory on can also give a performance boost for the PowerMac. There is a very patient and detailed memory allocation explanation in the MacBible (Download) troubleshooting section "What Are All Those Error Codes Anyway?" If you tend to use lots of PostScript fonts in a single document as you would in a specimen book, it may be necessary to increase the font cache in the Adobe Type Manager control panel.
Third party filters and plug-ins can be a subtle source of crashes. If you are troubleshooting an application that crashes and has add-ons, try removing them and replacing them in small groups as if you were looking for an extension conflict. When you upgrade to a new version of a product, you may need to upgrade any third party software as well. For Example, an older extension like RealAudio running with Netscape 4.0 may conflict with the bundled LiveAudio that is now included with Netscape 6.0
Certain applications may not be well-behaved with file sharing or virtual memory on. The documenation for such programs will normally warn of this unless they are older programs.
Deleting the associated preferences file may be sufficient to fix an application. Such files are normally found in the Preferences folder which can be found in the System Folder.
View the contents of your Preferences Folder by date and consider which recently changed files, if any, might be contributing to your problem. Certain applications, like Quark, tend to need this kind of attention more often than others. If this gets to be a nuisance, keep a spare backup copy of the worst offenders. Be sure to put key files from your Netscape preferences folder on on your backup too, like your preferences, bookmarks and global history if you feel they are valuable to you.
Remember that many extension conflicts do not actually show up until you begin to launch applications. They commonly manifest as error 11 on PowerMacs. If you boot with just a set of minimal Apple extensions on and experience no problems at all, then be very suspicious of an underlying extension conflict or bug. There are several applications with printable error charts like Black & Bleu and YER. The most explanatory lists, however, are on internet web pages. I think the nicest is Macintosh-System Error Codes Explained. In real life charts are a poor way to pin down problems because they can seldom give useful advice on just what to do to eliminate the error. Most of the time error codes are really there to help programmers fix bugs, not to help users. Be sure to mention the EXACT text of an error message if you contact technical support personnel about your problem. An error code may help you know that the same problem is recurring. If you get an error 26 (Bad Program Launch), your application program may be corrupt. If you get other error numbers in the range 15-31, be suspicious of corrupt system software. The rest of the time your errors are likely to be hardware problems, conflicts, bugs or memory allocation issues. Occasionally you may run into errors that appear when you add or reconfigure SCSI devices.
Power Macs are particularly susceptible to error 11. You might try SoftwareFPU from John Neil & Associates at (800) 663-2943 though it might make things run slower depending on which product you use. Installation of this and other JNA products can override hardware trapping of certain errors.
Check for and eliminate duplicate System and Finder files on your system drive. If you want to store a copy of your working System or Finder on your hard drive, keep it in compressed form or be sure that the two files live in separate folders.
There is a handy little program called Memory Mapper (66K) which gives a labeled picture of everything that is currently running on your computer. Similar programs are Peek-a-Boo .Symbionts, Process Watcher and YAPI.There may be several invisible things that will not show up in the application menu that you are unaware of, even things that could be malicious. Memory Mapper will be a tattle tale for you and let you know other things to turn off that you have not thought of. Memory is sometimes not released in the optimal way dictated by good programming practice. If you are suspicous that this might be causing you problems, give MacOS Purge a try.
The heap under System 9 is not as troublesome it used to be in earlier versions. Many utilities have been written over the years to compress the heap. Be sure the date on the utilities is close to the date on your system software and that the readme file tells you what system the software was tested on. Some of the more current programs are called Reaper and Substitute. Heap error reports from Conflict Catcher are discussed here.
SystemSentry and ApplicationSentry monitor the memory requirements of your computer and can help you determine which activities lead to memory-related problems.
If you notice a pattern of crashes with error 84, 87, 88, or 89 on OS 8.1 or earlier, run the shareware Crash Less Often Reporter to see if any of them fail to purge the WDEF resource. If so, you might try using the shareware WDEF Leopard extension for a while.
If nothing else has worked so far, you can try giving the System Folder a different name. Then move the contents to a newly created folder that you name System Folder. Bless it (make the Mac icon visible) by opening it and closing it even if you can see the icon already. If that fails, try dragging the System and Finder out of the System Folder, and then drag them back on top of the folder icon and drop them in again.
You can zap the PRAM especially if you have been getting error 10 or 11 repeatedly by pressing option-command-p-r (simultaneously) continously at startup until the machine has restarted at least three times. If you have a PCI Mac, it is important to press the keys as soon as possible after you press the power key so as to reset both the PRAM and the NVRAM. TechTool can store/restore a set of working PRAM values that you know are stable (but not the NVRAM). If your symptoms persist and you are convinced the PRAM is the cause, you might try removing your battery for 20 minutes with the machine unplugged. If your machine can't seem to hold onto the date or time PRAM settings, it is time to check your battery. If your battery checks out okay, but daily zapping of the PRAM is necessary to keep your machine running well, you might want to look around inside the computer case to see if a stray loose object is shorting out something. When a program crashes, unpredictable things can happen. PRAMs, boot blocks, and disk directories can be corrupted. You might also want to know about PRAM Battery Checker & PRAM Inspector.
Certain PowerMac models (like the 7500 and 8500) have a special tiny cuda button on the motherboard that performs a PRAM reset that is even more rigorous than is possible with software. This button can be pressed if a software PRAM zap fails to help. If your screen is black, but the powerlight is on, this may bring your monitor back to life.
TWILIGHT ZONE: "We completely destroyed a 8500/120, simply by playing a 1 KHz tone using SoundEdit v1.6. While playing the tone, the system locked up, and upon restart, would not power on, and was totally dead."--Scott H. Richardson (a Systems Administrator for Motorola) via MacFixIt
If your trouble is that you are responsible for a remote machine, the most useful software approach is probably Autoboot, It reboots the machine, when an error dialog box appears. It can be used with Keep It Up, which checks to see if a critical application quits unexpectedly and relaunches it if needed. Rebound combines software and hardware for a more complete solution. Many other such programs exist and one called Okey Dokey is handy for logging and dismissing dialog boxes that might stall a machine. Logging the applications that have been running is done by YooZ and Detective.
In a final act of desperation you can reformat your system hard drive. If you have an alternate drive that you can run from for a while, you may be able to learn whether the original hard drive is really the problem. Otherwise backup all your files and be sure you have a method to boot to a working drive with the software you will use to restore these files.
IMPORTANT! Don't overlook recording any serial numbers that you may need to reinstall files or applications. Also, record the file count, so you can double check the number of files backed up with the number of files restored.
If you decide to reformat your hard drive, use the most current version of a good hard drive formatting utility. For Apple hard disk drives, you may use Apple's free Drive Setup utility. For non-Apple drives programs like Silver Lining or Hard Disk Toolkit can be used. Once formatted, existing files are gone for good. If you use a backup program, do a trial restore of sample files to a test drive before you trash the original source files by formatting the drive.
Install fresh system software from a CD or locked factory floppies, then restore any remaining files needed for your work except any FileSaver or Prevention data files and/or any suspicious preference files. Test each program and extension to see that they all work.
Apple's code word for crashing is "stability". Invariably Apple will claim that each new version of the Mac OS that they release is more stable than the last. Maybe yes, maybe no, it depends on just how much you want to bleed. Living on the bleeding edge is for people whose job does not depend on such stability. Conventional wisdom dictates that no one should buy and begin to use a new version of an operating system for at least six months, preferably a year while developers catch up. There will always be plenty of extremists willing to put the distribution CD to their temple and pull the trigger, you don't have to join them, but you can learn a lot from the running dialog of their mistakes on MacFixit.com.
If you are doing a first time install of a more recent version of the system, be sure to check with vendors of any third party software or hardware you own for compatibility. Many out-of-business companies are unavailable to provide drivers or other support needed to run older products originally made for earlier systems. Be aware that newer systems are designed to run best on faster machines. They may take more memory, run slower, and be generally less responsive than earlier systems. This is aggravated substantially on the web by the amount of crash prone software in use (e.g. Netscape and Explorer).
When you run out of ideas and need to contact technical support, you may find that they would like the courtesy of a detailed system profile. Many profilers have come and gone over the years, and Apple has bundled the Apple System Profiler with recent versions of the Mac OS. TattleTech, ExtractIt and TechTool can be found on the web at shareware sites. They are necessary because the Apple System Profiler reports can only be generated on certain Powerbook, Proforma, and PowerMac models.There is a PCI card profiler called MegaWolf PCI Tool and another called PCIProber.
If you have a machine that crashes a lot and you have decided to live with it rather than have it fixed, you might like to try some software palatives. The FileSaver control panel that comes with Norton Utilities helps keep track of files that are candidates for undelete. There is a similar feature in TechTool Pro that actually caches deleted files in a hidden folder if you have lots of disk space. MacPitstop offers two programs MacMedic plus Search & Rescue to help with file recovery. Wildbits also offers Data Rescue.
If you think it is possible that your computer might be crashing because of an outside attack directed at you via the internet, you can try the free on-line Symantec Security Check.
If all this sounds too technical for you, unless you have a knowledgeable computer friend (not me), you will probably have to use a technical repair facility. Ask for an estimate of what it may cost to keep from being surprised later on. Don't forget to ask about the possibility of extended warrantee service.
Again, if you are an educational user or you have a new machine that is under 90-day warranty, Apple can be reached for their free advice at (800) SOS-APPL. Their Customer Support Program options are listed in a press release explaining the termination of their free telephone support. Crashing systems are dramas that can go on for days, if you are in a hurry, go pay someone else to fix it. Good Luck (and don't write me about it, I just told you what I know on these pages.)
updated 12/2001
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