Every darn program quits when loading...

[pissed-monkey]

Well, lurking to find out about PB updates from Paris is just wasting my life it seems, so:

Time to fix my old G4 imac at home. Probably something really simple but I just cant see it! Right, after a reboot no flippin programs will load up. As in they start to load, but then I get that "explorer has unexpectedly quit" message type thing before it has finished loading. This happens with all program I try to load up (explorer, safari, firefox, mail, entorage etc.) . With itunes it has just downloaded the latest update, but before this can start it declares "not enough memory" - thinking this might have something to do with it I've cleared the hard drive up a bit so theres about 20+ gigs of space now.....

mac: imac g4 800mhz, 512meg, 80gig, osX 10.2.9 (i think)


Any help/clues mucho welcome....

P.monkey

 

[AlBDamned]

Well, lurking to find out about PB updates from Paris is just wasting my life it seems, so:

Time to fix my old G4 imac at home. Probably something really simple but I just cant see it! Right, after a reboot no flippin programs will load up. As in they start to load, but then I get that "explorer has unexpectedly quit" message type thing before it has finished loading. This happens with all program I try to load up (explorer, safari, firefox, mail, entorage etc.) . With itunes it has just downloaded the latest update, but before this can start it declares "not enough memory" - thinking this might have something to do with it I've cleared the hard drive up a bit so theres about 20+ gigs of space now.....

mac: imac g4 800mhz, 512meg, 80gig, osX 10.2.9 (i think)


Any help/clues mucho welcome....

P.monkey

Sounds like you may well have some bad RAM.

 

[pissed-monkey]

Sounds like you may well have some bad RAM.

ah nutz. Can RAM just go bad then? I haven't touched the ram for about 18months or so.... I'll poke one of the sticks out tonight then, and see what happens.

cheers ears!

 

[mad jew]

AlBDamned is probably (and hopefully) correct as usual. However, there is the small risk that it could be a hard drive failure in which case I'd start backing things up immediately.

Just out of interest (and this doesn't necessarily disprove anything), is the SMART status verified in Disk Utility?

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I too, think this sounds like hardware failure, but a couple of other things you might try:

- Can you open programs when logged in as another (admin) user?

- You said you just cleared the HD, you didn't throw away anything from any of the Library folders (like any Fonts)?

- Also you should boot up in Single user mode and run fsck

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Hiccup...

 

[pissed-monkey]

I too, think this sounds like hardware failure, but a couple of other things you might try:

- Can you open programs when logged in as another (admin) user?

- You said you just cleared the HD, you didn't throw away anything from any of the Library folders (like any Fonts)?

- Also you should boot up in Single user mode and run fsck

Deffo going to give this more of a look tonight, I have some good leads now, thanks guys....

HD wise, I moved the stuff after the problem appeared. I'd downloaded newest Itunes, had to reboot to start and nothing has worked since. I noticed I had less than 4gig space on the HD, so moved aload of music onto my external HD and just binned a load of programs and files that were hanging around growing mold, nowt from Library folders (i hope).

Norton solutions did load ok, and strangley I think Word did as well. Thinking about it, it makes sense its maybe a RAM thing. Problems loading programes from either HD.


I think the main problem might be the old dog knew I was looking at getting a PB, and probably heard me mention "if there's an update in Paris Im deffo getting one", and is now trying out a bit of self harm to regain my attention.

 

[Eric5h5]

With itunes it has just downloaded the latest update, but before this can start it declares "not enough memory" - thinking this might have something to do with it I've cleared the hard drive up a bit so theres about 20+ gigs of space now.....

"Not enough memory" has absolutely nothing at all to do with the hard drive. They are completely different things. Freeing up space on the hard drive will do nil, nada, zippo for memory. This is a common confusion so I'm not picking on you.

Anyway, yeah, sounds like bad RAM to me.

--Eric

 

[pissed-monkey]

"Not enough memory" has absolutely nothing at all to do with the hard drive. They are completely different things. Freeing up space on the hard drive will do nil, nada, zippo for memory. This is a common confusion so I'm not picking on you.

Anyway, yeah, sounds like bad RAM to me.

--Eric

One last question on this:

I smacked open the imac the other night, took out the RAM from the expansion slot, fired her up, and still have the same problem.
So this would suggest its the fixed RAM causing the problem? Which is where my skills completely dry up.....

.....is it possible for me to do anything about this with a hammer and a chisel or is it ihospital time? and anyone know what sort of UK price is this likley to cost me? (money might be better towards powerbook)


If is means anything (doubtfull) its not all programs that crash, only explorer, safari, firefox, entarage and finalcutpro i think......photoshop, excel, word, finaldraft etc, all seem to work ok.