Problems, problems, time to reinstall system?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Or something less drastic? Here's my sad tale:



I'm having a series of problems. First some intermittent audio problems with Garageband, then, then some external drives won't mount, and now I can't sync to my disk from the iMac.



I've run Disk Utitilies a few times and when I do Verify Disk Permissions, it finds a list of things to fix, I then hit Repair Disk Permissions and it fixes them, and then hit Verify Disk, and it say the disk appears ok. When I do Verify Disk Permissions again though, it finds another long list of things to fix.



Is this serious? What should my next step be? Should I reinstall the entire system?



Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    No, I wouldn't recommend it, especially on the basis of such a vague description of the problem.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    what would you recommend?
  • Reply 3 of 15
    First, that you describe the problems in more detail.
  • Reply 4 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Soundhound View Post


    Or something less drastic? Here's my sad tale:



    I'm having a series of problems. First some intermittent audio problems with Garageband, then, then some external drives won't mount, and now I can't sync to my disk from the iMac.



    I've run Disk Utitilies a few times and when I do Verify Disk Permissions, it finds a list of things to fix, I then hit Repair Disk Permissions and it fixes them, and then hit Verify Disk, and it say the disk appears ok. When I do Verify Disk Permissions again though, it finds another long list of things to fix.



    Is this serious? What should my next step be? Should I reinstall the entire system?




    Yes, this is serious: your SL is, quite obviously, corrupt.

    So I would insert the Leopard installation disk and start up from it (holding 'C'), and restore a recent Time Machine backup, from before SL!, including Leopard!

    And forget about SL until OSX.6.2 is out.
  • Reply 5 of 15
    bbwibbwi Posts: 812member
    Since you can still log into your computer I would create another user account. Then make sure that new account is an admin account and then log into it. Copy your original accounts home directory to your backup drive. Wipe and reinstall Snow Leopard from scratch. Move the backup copy of your old home directory back to the new installation of snow leopard



    Ideally, I agree with the previous poster and say that Snow Leopard is a piece of crap and that you should wait but it appears that you can't wait that long
  • Reply 6 of 15
    Is SL snow leapard? I don't think I'm running that. What # system does SL start with?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rokcet Scientist View Post


    Yes, this is serious: your SL is, quite obviously, corrupt.

    So I would insert the Leopard installation disk and start up from it (holding 'C'), and restore a recent Time Machine backup, from before SL!, including Leopard!

    And forget about SL until OSX.6.2 is out.



  • Reply 7 of 15
    Quite the attitude there, Dr.!



    What can I tell you that I haven't already?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    First, that you describe the problems in more detail.



  • Reply 8 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Soundhound View Post


    Quite the attitude there, Dr.!



    What can I tell you that I haven't already?



    You're welcome.



    Such as what you mean by "intermittent audio problems with Garageband." What kind of problems? And "I can't sync to my disk from the iMac." I don't even know what this means. Is "the iMac" the computer with the problem, or another computer? What disk, and what are you trying to sync? Little stuff like that.



    My attitude is to try to help, which I can't do based on so little information. Some are happy to recommend that you blast away at your Mac randomly but I'm not.
  • Reply 9 of 15
    The problems with Garageband are that every now and then, and increasingly frequently recently, there would be no output from Garageband, even though I could see input going into it (i"m speaking here of playing guitar into garageband) , on both the meters on the audio interface (MOTU 828) and on Garageband itself. Quitting and restarting garageband generally takes care of the problem.



    Not sure what you don't understand about not being able to sync to my iDisk. Ah, in your quote you say Disk, not iDisk, maybe I left the 'I' off? In any case, I use iDisk syncing from two seperate macs, the iImac in question here, and my macbook pro. The iDisk hasn't been reflecting changes made from the iMac recently, so I erased everything from it, and have been resyincing with both computers. Jury;s out on that one...



    Does that help?







    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    You're welcome.



    Such as what you mean by "intermittent audio problems with Garageband." What kind of problems? And "I can't sync to my disk from the iMac." I don't even know what this means. Is "the iMac" the computer with the problem, or another computer? What disk, and what are you trying to sync? Little stuff like that.



    My attitude is to try to help, which I can't do based on so little information. Some are happy to recommend that you blast away at your Mac randomly but I'm not.



  • Reply 10 of 15
    Are you saying that GarageBand is not recording your guitar inputs some of the time, or not playing them back? I'm no GarageBand expert by any means, but if simply quitting and restarting any application clears a problem, then it seems apparent that the issue is very likely to be specific to that application. How long does it take before the issue crops up again after restarting? Can you reproduce the problem?



    I'd be tempted to delete the plist for GarageBand. It's sort of a shot in the dark but easy and reversible.



    You mention something in your original post about "some" external drives not mounting on your iMac. The same one each time? Sometimes but not always? Does this drive mount on your other Mac? Have you verified this drive in Disk Utility?
  • Reply 11 of 15
    It's not playing them back. Well not technically playing them back, it's not passing the audio through. What's a plist? P-list? permissions? The issue crops up intermittently, sometimes a day sometimes 2 or three days, usually within a week.



    The problems with the external drives I mentioned have been happening over the period of the last year or so. I keep an adhoc series of externals attached for storage backup etc. It seems like one or two 'dies' every tyear. It just disappears, never to be seen again. It won't mount, and so can't be seen by disk utility. I've replaced several of these drives (generally they are lacie external drives) but it's happening too much, and so I'm thinking of getting a Drobo system. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something going on in my imac that's causing the problem with the drives. It's a guess of course, but since there have been these other problems with the imac, I thought it might have been the cause of this problem as well.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    Are you saying that GarageBand is not recording your guitar inputs some of the time, or not playing them back? I'm no GarageBand expert by any means, but if simply quitting and restarting any application clears a problem, then it seems apparent that the issue is very likely to be specific to that application. How long does it take before the issue crops up again after restarting? Can you reproduce the problem?



    I'd be tempted to delete the plist for GarageBand. It's sort of a shot in the dark but easy and reversible.



    You mention something in your original post about "some" external drives not mounting on your iMac. The same one each time? Sometimes but not always? Does this drive mount on your other Mac? Have you verified this drive in Disk Utility?



  • Reply 12 of 15
    Your Mac can't assassinate drives like that. At least I've never heard of such a thing. A drive that won't mount (such an unformatted drive) should still be seen by Disk Utility. If it can't even be reformatted then it's usually a goner. This happens to me essentially never, so that kind of failure rate is pretty alarming. Spikes in electrical power perhaps? Maybe you need a line voltage conditioner?



    The plist is the preferences settings for the application. Look in user/Library/Preferences for:



    com.apple.garageband.plist



    Drag it out onto the Desktop (or somewhere else you can find it). GarageBand will create a new plist the next time you launch it. You can always replace the new plist with the old one if it doesn't help.



    You got good advice above for creating a new user account. Did you try that, and did it make any difference?
  • Reply 13 of 15
    taurontauron Posts: 911member
    I would uninstall all Microsoft software before trying to reinstall SL.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    I just thought I had a problem, figured it out and Love SL !
  • Reply 15 of 15
    areseearesee Posts: 776member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Soundhound View Post


    The problems with the external drives I mentioned have been happening over the period of the last year or so. I keep an adhoc series of externals attached for storage backup etc. It seems like one or two 'dies' every tyear. It just disappears, never to be seen again. It won't mount, and so can't be seen by disk utility. I've replaced several of these drives (generally they are lacie external drives) but it's happening too much, and so I'm thinking of getting a Drobo system. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something going on in my imac that's causing the problem with the drives. It's a guess of course, but since there have been these other problems with the imac, I thought it might have been the cause of this problem as well.



    I've had similar problems with LaCie drives. I get good service if I turn them on, and leave them on. If I turn them off I can get problems with trying to turn them on again.



    If your using that overpriced rack to mount several drives together in a small space. Don't. The drives are either not getting enough airflow and overheating. Or they are electrically interfering with each other. Either way they are very unreliable when used together in their 'special' rack.
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