Several Problems With New iMac. No Idea What's Wrong???

[john_satc]

Well were having numerous issues with the new iMac (running Tiger 10.4.2). These are:

iTunes and MSN Messenger preferences seems to have deleted themselves. When they were loaded they wanted me to agree to the terms and conditions again and preferneces were gone.

Spotlight won't find anything. I.E. I type in 'Safari' and nothing comes up.

In Safari on one of the accounts all the saved bookmarks disappeared.

iTunes would not load on another account.

The whole OS has generally been slow.


I have tried repairin permitions and other than that I have no idea what to do, can anyone help?

 

[mduser63]

Well, I can't say I have an idea of what's going on, but I've heard people say that sometimes factory OS X installs can be a little messed up. Since the computer's brand new, and you probably don't have much on it that isn't either backed up or on another computer, you might just try reinstalling Tiger from scratch from the system restore disks.

 

[nospleen]

I would just do a complete reinstall. I have not had any issues on mine. Sometimes it is better to start fresh.

 

[john_satc]

I would just do a complete reinstall. I have not had any issues on mine. Sometimes it is better to start fresh.

See that is what I feared people would say. I have actually filled around 60 gigs in the month I have had it so starting a fresh would be a little difficult - however would probably help.
Second reason is, I convinced my guardian (who payed for it) that Macs were great computers and he finally bought this one for the family and now the problems have started! If I tell him I have to reinstall he won't be to happy.

 

[nospleen]

If you have an external drive you can get everything back to normal in an hour and a half or so! Hurry!!

 

[Chacala_Nayarit]

See that is what I feared people would say. I have actually filled around 60 gigs in the month I have had it so starting a fresh would be a little difficult - however would probably help.
Second reason is, I convinced my guardian (who payed for it) that Macs were great computers and he finally bought this one for the family and now the problems have started! If I tell him I have to reinstall he won't be to happy.

One thing about computing, if you are going to have large drives you need a reasonable method of backing up the drives. Burning hundreds of CD's or DVD's sucks. Oh, and why do you have to say anything to your guardian? Be a man and get the job done.

 

[nospleen]

One thing about computing, if you are going to have large drives you need a reasonable method of backing up the drives. Burning hundreds of CD's or DVD's sucks. Oh, and why do you have to say anything to your guardian? Be a man and get the job done.

Play nice!

 

[john_satc]

Well decided just to wipe the disk.
Have a Lacie drive so not much of deal, just taking time to do it. Plus the photos won't copy from iPhoto for some reason so I am having to burn them onto cd.

And I have to tell my guardian as he has been the one experiencing the problems, and he showed me. Also fact that he spent over a grand on it, he wants to be told what I am doing to it!

 

[mkrishnan]

Well decided just to wipe the disk.
Have a Lacie drive so not much of deal, just taking time to do it. Plus the photos won't copy from iPhoto for some reason so I am having to burn them onto cd.

You may want to reformat or run fsck / repair disk just to make sure that this isn't all due to a lower level problem (i.e. a disk / volume issue and not an issue with the software on it).

Sorry you're having so much trouble with it!

 

[mklos]

I've setup a couple of Macs that had bad installations of OS X on it. Just do what you got to do. Back up, do a full erase of the HD and then re-install Mac OS X and see what happens. If your problems come back, then its most definitely, a hardware problem. It could even be something as simple as a bad stick of RAM. A bad stick of RAM can, and may cause a bad installation of OS X over and over again until you take that stick of RAM out.

Just because this iMac is bad, doesn't mean that all of the hundreds of iMacs that were produced along with that one are bad. If you build a hundred iMacs in one day, you're probably going to have at least 1 have a problem of some sort. Apple can't control a bad logicboard, bad stick of RAM, or bad installation of OS X. Its just something that happens. The same things happen to Dells, HPs, Gateways, and even home built PCs. You can spend $1500 on a home built PC and have a bad motherboard, or bad stick of RAM right off.

 

[john_satc]

Just because this iMac is bad, doesn't mean that all of the hundreds of iMacs that were produced along with that one are bad. If you build a hundred iMacs in one day, you're probably going to have at least 1 have a problem of some sort. Apple can't control a bad logicboard, bad stick of RAM, or bad installation of OS X. Its just something that happens. The same things happen to Dells, HPs, Gateways, and even home built PCs. You can spend $1500 on a home built PC and have a bad motherboard, or bad stick of RAM right off.

Oh i complete understand that. I am not complaining that Apple messed up. I am simply saying there is a problem. I have had an iBook for around 9 months and it has worked fine, plus 2 iPod that worked fine. I know most of the time Apple's stuff works great, just the odd occassion. And if it is the RAM then that's Apples own stuff too.

 

[iEdd]

Sorry man I hate it whenever you try to prove to someone that macs are the coolest, that's when they start screwing up... Oh well, not as much as pcs
Good luck with the reinstall!

 

[mklos]

Oh i complete understand that. I am not complaining that Apple messed up. I am simply saying there is a problem. I have had an iBook for around 9 months and it has worked fine, plus 2 iPod that worked fine. I know most of the time Apple's stuff works great, just the odd occassion. And if it is the RAM then that's Apples own stuff too.

Well Apple doesn't make they're own RAM. They use a few different vendors of RAM. If it is bad though, all you have to do is call Apple and have them go through some things with you and they'll replace it for you free. Or, if you have an Apple Retail Store near by, you can take the iMac there and they can replace it for you for free.

I'm sure you know how great Apple products are, I was just saying that because you can explain that to your guardian. Its a known fact that Macs have far less problems that any PC you can buy. You can even do a google search and find evidence to prove that.

 

[john_satc]

OK So I backed up everything and burned a disk of all my photos from iPhoto - just incase. Then I reinstalled Tiger.
Here is the problem.
When I try to copy the photos into iPhoto (having wiped the disk and started again) iPhoto will happily take around 80 of the pictures, leaving between 500 - 800 photos not copied. It says the file formats are not recognized (jpg, tiff and others). This is a serious problem as I have lost a lot of the photos! Why is this happening and how can it stop!

 

[mkrishnan]

OK So I backed up everything and burned a disk of all my photos from iPhoto - just incase. Then I reinstalled Tiger.
Here is the problem.
When I try to copy the photos into iPhoto (having wiped the disk and started again) iPhoto will happily take around 80 of the pictures, leaving between 500 - 800 photos not copied. It says the file formats are not recognized (jpg, tiff and others). This is a serious problem as I have lost a lot of the photos! Why is this happening and how can it stop!

Mmmm.... the better way for you to have done this would have been to make a backup of the whole pictures folder in your home directory. I'm guessing you didn't do this?

How exactly are you importing the photos back from the disc?

 

[john_satc]

Mmmm.... the better way for you to have done this would have been to make a backup of the whole pictures folder in your home directory. I'm guessing you didn't do this?

How exactly are you importing the photos back from the disc?

I didn't do that, no.
I just pop in the disk and iPhoto opens and goes to import the picturs, but now crashes! I tried copying photos from the disk onto the computer and importing them into iPhoto, and again it won't work.

 

[PCheese]

Is this right?

1. You bought a new iMac (iSight model)
2. You transferred all your old information using the Migration Assistant?
3. You started having trouble with the computer.

First of all, iTunes will ALWAYS display the license agreement when you update it to a new version or move to a new computer, even if you bring along your old preference files. I'm fairly certain it checks against the hardware configuration of the computer (makes sense since this is how FairPlay works). So that's normal.

Second, the iMac is running 10.4.2, but what was your earlier Mac running?

Third, did you save your iPhoto library to a CD and then try to re-import them? It's possible that the CD is scratched/defective. Try opening the photos that don't work through the Finder and Preview instead of iPhoto.

 

[john_satc]

Is this right?

1. You bought a new iMac (iSight model)
2. You transferred all your old information using the Migration Assistant?
3. You started having trouble with the computer.

First of all, iTunes will ALWAYS display the license agreement when you update it to a new version or move to a new computer, even if you bring along your old preference files. I'm fairly certain it checks against the hardware configuration of the computer (makes sense since this is how FairPlay works). So that's normal.

Second, the iMac is running 10.4.2, but what was your earlier Mac running?

Third, did you save your iPhoto library to a CD and then try to re-import them? It's possible that the CD is scratched/defective. Try opening the photos that don't work through the Finder and Preview instead of iPhoto.

Nope.
My new iMac was bought just before the updates.
All the information was added fresh, no migration assistant.
iTunes had been running before the T&C agreement popped up.
The CD was fresh out the packet so hopefuly it is not that. When trying to open the photos in preview it says the photos 'may be corrupt or a file format preview doesn't recognize'

 

[ingenious]

Nope.
My new iMac was bought just before the updates.
All the information was added fresh, no migration assistant.
iTunes had been running before the T&C agreement popped up.
The CD was fresh out the packet so hopefuly it is not that. When trying to open the photos in preview it says the photos 'may be corrupt or a file format preview doesn't recognize'

Well, if you have 10.4.2, then you probably ran Software Update (or it ran itself and is set to autoinstall updates) and it installed the new version iTunes, which would trigger the License Agreement again.... MSN messenger that came off of the Office CD or from the Test Drive of Office is 4.0.1 or so and the newest is 5.0.... so the MS autoupdate might've updated those on its own as well...

 

[john_satc]

Well, if you have 10.4.2, then you probably ran Software Update (or it ran itself and is set to autoinstall updates) and it installed the new version iTunes, which would trigger the License Agreement again.... MSN messenger that came off of the Office CD or from the Test Drive of Office is 4.0.1 or so and the newest is 5.0.... so the MS autoupdate might've updated those on its own as well...

With the iTunes update I did that myself and agreed to T&C on each user account. But is kept popping up (tried 3/4 times).
And I had messenger 5.0 already. But thanks for trying to help