error -34 and other things

[isculpt]

I have a G4 powerbook. Yesterday it just started acting up, first I could not print to the HP printer, though I could instruct it to print test pages it said it could not find it. Tried a bunch of things. and a message that says Uccesful-o.k. conflicting attributes.

So things progressed and we got frightend thought maybe we should back up everything, but it won't allow the CD's to burn I keep getting a error-34. I have norton system works and would run it if I was sure everything was backed up, but things are just too big to try and get off the computer any other way but a CD. any help is greatly appreciated.

thanks

 

[yellow]

Are you running OS X? What version?

If you have Norton System Work INSTALLED, I suggest removing it immediately. It's definitely NOT helping you.

 

[isculpt]

yes it is os x

Sorry I should have mentioned that I was using osX
10.3.4
Curious about your comment on system works. I have uninstalled it because I was going to reinstall it.

 

[yellow]

Norton's time with Mac OS has passed into legacy along with OS 9. Norton hasn't put out a decent product for use with OS X.. well, ever. In fact, they've dropped support for most of their Mac products. System Works in particular causes way more problems than it solves, so it should be A#1 in the list to nuke when you're having problems and you have it installed.

So, next on the list in troubleshooting is to log in as another user (create if need be) to see if the problems you're seeing follow you there (meaning it's a system-wide problem) or if it's isolated to your normal user.

 

[isculpt]

Thanks

thanks, I did that last night. Hubby and I both worked on it seems to do it under user or system administration. ( I think that is what you are talking about, am I correct?) Next suggestion.

By the way, What do you suggest instead of norton?

 

[~Shard~]

Norton is a resource hogging, crash-inducing virus for the Mac. Get it off your system for starters and you'll notice all sorts of improvements.

Then, repair permissions, and check things out. Afterwards, as yellow suggested, try to replicate the problem with another user.

 

[yellow]

By the way, What do you suggest instead of norton?

What were you trying to accomplish with it?

As for the next step, as suggest, repair permisions, followed by booting from the Installation CD/DVD and using Disk Utility and First Aid to Repair Disk, and then, still failing, I'd look at the logs for relevant information.

Is there some reason you're not up to 10.3.9?

 

[isculpt]

I have to remember everything that we tried to do last night. I believe that we tried to boot from the installed CD but it prompted us to reinstall instead of just booting from the CD. I think that is what happened. It also asked what language we wanted, we were afraid to take the step further and chance reinstalling everything and maybe killing some files, and it was late so we decided to wait on that until today.

"What were you trying to accomplish with it?" I guess the it is the sytems works? We wanted to have protection and assistance if something went wrong. It has the antivirus on it as well.

"Is there some reason you're not up to 10.3.9?" No reason other than the hassle of upgrading and the genuine fear that I have about new things on the comptuer that may throws bugs into old things. I had received Mac OSX Tiger, but I guess that is actually different than 10.3.9. Would you recommend putting that on the computer? AFter I get all of these problems fixed of course.

 

[isculpt]

please give more information

Can you please tell me about repairing permissions, how to do that. Also about starting from the CD. Does anyone know if the prompts mentioned above are indeed asking me to reinstall instead of just starting from the CD?

 

[yellow]

Choose the languge, and then the pull-down menus should appear, one of them has Disk Utility in it.

As for repair of permissions, do it from the Disk Utility applications installed on your hard drive. /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app and then choose First Aid tab, select your boot drive, and click on Repair Permissions.

Please note, you should be repairing permissions when booted from the DVD/CD as all the receipts on there are very out of date.

Finally, Panther or Tiger doesn't matter, Panther is fine, but I would encourage you to back up and update, as there have been MANY security updates released since 10.3.4.

 

[isculpt]

o.k. I have repaired permissions and that actually allowed me to print, which was my original problem, but when I try to burn a cd it says something like disc is full, which does not make any sence.

I want to be very clear on my next step.
* I have two cd's for the power pook g4. I put in disk1 , restart the computer holding the c key and then insataller comes up and asks if I want to continue- the language screen. I want to be sure that I am just going to start from the cd and not reinstall if I press continue.

thanks so much

 

[yellow]

o.k. I have repaired permissions and that actually allowed me to print, which was my original problem, but when I try to burn a cd it says something like disc is full, which does not make any sence.

It does, actually.. Is your hard drive full? In order to burn a CD from the Finder, a cached local disk image (sort of is made) and what you copy onto the CD icon is actually going to that image, which is then transfered to the CD. So, you have to have at least a CD's worth of free disk space in order to burn a CD. If you have that little disk space left, that is part of your problem as well. You should have at least 1-1.5GB of free disk space minimum.

I want to be very clear on my next step.
* I have two cd's for the power pook g4. I put in disk1 , restart the computer holding the c key and then insataller comes up and asks if I want to continue- the language screen. I want to be sure that I am just going to start from the cd and not reinstall if I press continue.

That is correct. There are quite a few hoops to jump through and buttons to press OK to before it would reinstall OS X. So unless you're completely not reading what is presented, you're fine. Choose the language, hit the File pull down menu, choose Disk Utility, etc, etc

 

[isculpt]

You are kind to walk me through this.

This is what it says

capacity 74.4
available 53.62

So it does not appear to be that it is full

 

[yellow]

Strange.. maybe there's some leftovers in /tmp. Have you tried the obligatory restart since your last attempt to burn a CD?

 

[isculpt]

working from the CD allowed me to be able to burn CD's which I want to back up everything before going any further. However.....

There was problems and I pressed repair so I suppose they are fixed.

I am not sure if everything is resolved, but the immediate problems seem to be. Hubby suggested I defragment the hard drive, but I don't know how to do that.

I am now very concerned about the norton system works. What are you all ,or as we say in texas Ya'll, using to keep your systems in ship shape and as a antivirus?

thanks for everything.

 

[yellow]

Well, considering OS X defrags on the fly, you don't really "need" to defrag it. And you have to use 3rd party software if you want to do it still.

And since there's no viruses for OS X, there's not really a "need" for an AV software. But you can use ClamAV for free..

And as for the way to "keep your systems in ship shape".. well I hate to say it, but just what was Norton doing for you to keep stuff "ship shape"? Not much, trust me. I find that most folks that buy this come from the PC world (Or are new to OS X in some other way) and don't really know why they need it, just that everyone they know has it and tells them they "need" it. Symantec thrives on that stuff.

There's really no "ship shaping" needed.

Just apply your updates and repair your permissions after installing things that require admin passwords. Make sure you have enough disk space, and always back your **** up, often!