My First "What the FUCK Apple?"

[Shire Le Buff]

This has been an reoccurring problem and always results in a huge pain in the ass.   The main problem is this: sometimes my Macbook freezes up.   When this happens I am sometimes forced to hold down the power button and force the computer to shut down this way.   Then I restart the computer, and almost all of my original settings are no longer applied.   Camino acts like I have never turned it on before, my dock is sometimes returned to the state it was when I first turned the computer on, and to make matters extremely annoying: I have to set up my Mail accounts all over again on Mail.   

Any Mac people know what's going on?   Something I can do to prevent this or a way to revert back to the way it was before I had to force it to shut down?

[Larry Flyntz]

Here's a suggestion: buy a PC.

[WWW.SETH.COM]

Here's a suggestion: buy a PC.

Good point. PCs never have problems.

[Shire Le Buff]

I have a PC Flyntz and I'm in no hurry to get rid of it.   But for me the Apple software is much more intuitive and easy to use.   Also I've found nothing that I originally used on the PC that I also couldn't find for cheap or as free open source applications for the Mac.

Which is why this one problem is still bugging me.   I've never had any problems with my Mac before so I really don't know the first step it was take in troubleshooting for it.

Also, now Mail opens but after prompting for my mail server password it shuts down automatically.   It's getting frustrating.   So if anyone (Dan) knows what going on any help would be appreciated.

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

First things first, run Disk Utility. Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility.

Highlight your boot disk. Your optical drive and any other drive based gadgets will show up as well. Whether you click on the drive or the partition only matters if you've made partitions. If not either way is fine, but I usually go for the whole drive. Click "Repir Disk Permissions." Get back to me after that.

CHEERS!

[Shire Le Buff]

I did what you said Dan and then tried to reopen my Mail.   It did remain open longer this time, and I was able to enter my password for my account, then it closed down yet again.   I might have to just bite the bullet and download a second email app like Thunderbird for this computer, or is there a way to easily erase all of Mail's content and start fresh?

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

OK, so is your machine still freezing up randomly? Check the Activity Monitor if it is and see what's running. If you see something weird, it's probably a result of some Startup Item you forgot about. These can be manages in the User tab of System Preferences, or in the application.

[Shire Le Buff]

The system does not freeze up, just the Mail application.   It closes on me within 30 seconds of turning it on.

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

After some digging, it appears that if you're using To-Do's with iCal they might be the culprit. The removal of all To-do's seems to fix the freezing.

Also, I would really advise straying from Mail. As long as it works, it's a remarkable program (especially in Leopard, where it has like a million billion more features) and I've never found an OS X mail app that competes. From what I hear, Thunderbird is very very shaky.

[Shire Le Buff]

I use and love Thunderbird on my PC.   It's almost as bare bones as Mail, which is how I like it.   I am still attempting to correct Mail though and will try to remove and stray "to-do's" though I can't remember making on in the past couple months.   

Is it possible Mail is just freaking out from the sheer avalanche of junk mail my Nickmongo mail account creates?   Every time I've lost all my settings I've had to recreate this account in Mail and it has had to redownload every bot comment nickmongo.com has ever received and then process it as Junk.   The only problem with this theory is that Mail still has the same problem when I am not online, so it can't be trying to dredge up these old messages.

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

I use and love Thunderbird on my PC.   It's almost as bare bones as Mail, which is how I like it.   I am still attempting to correct Mail though and will try to remove and stray "to-do's" though I can't remember making on in the past couple months.   

Is it possible Mail is just freaking out from the sheer avalanche of junk mail my Nickmongo mail account creates?   Every time I've lost all my settings I've had to recreate this account in Mail and it has had to redownload every bot comment nickmongo.com has ever received and then process it as Junk.   The only problem with this theory is that Mail still has the same problem when I am not online, so it can't be trying to dredge up these old messages.

Thunderbird is very good on the PC. It's just that Mail is so well integrated in OS X, I don't see the point of switching to something not fully implemented (unless Mail doesn't work, or you're a freaking homebrew jerk).

Ok, here's what you're going to do. It's sketchy, but I'm handing you a solutions, so you might as well take it. Some browsing led me to this page: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2005070807515981

It has instructions on how to completely reinstall a low level Mac app with the program Pacifist. The program is shareware, but I have acquired it here: http://spacepiratesltd.com/dan/pacifist.zip . The ZIP contains a couple of serials. Use them for whatever you need. Maybe they will work with this application, and it would be a happy coincidence. Who knows.

Next, follow the instructions on the Macfixit page:

Insert your Mac OS X Installation CD or DVD
Launch Pacifist
Click the button "Open Mac OS X Install packages" (this option will be grayed out and inaccessible if no Mac OS X disc is present)
Simply select the desired, currently missing or unusable application and click "Install"

I tried this out on my Leopard machine (not a reinstallation, but to see if it could work) and it did! See below.



let us know if it works out for you.

[Shire Le Buff]

I haven't gotten around to fixing the Mail application, but that thing where all my settings are erased just happened again.   My task bar is all screwy (different applications on there and its magnification and size settings are different) and now my Transmission seems to be having trouble remembering what it was last doing.

This seems to happen when ever I'm back at home.

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

If you have your install discs, just pop it in and Archive and Install it. After you've made thorough backups f course.

[Shire Le Buff]

The install disk hunt begins!

[Violent Unrest in Allentown]

Read this too: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120