[T-Man]

I had just restarted my PowerBook 30 minutes or so before this happened; stupid copy proteccted DVDs, I thought it was stuck in my drive! Anyway, I have Activity Monitor start at startup and display the green CPU bar and RAM usage in Dock. I was on battery, and I think my CPU is set for Auto. I then went to open Adium, and..........MY PB FROZE!!!!!! Time literally stopped. Cursor was fine, though menus, buttons, and Dock were unusable. So, I forced shutdown, restarted 20 or so mins later. Activity Mon. comes up, my CPU is 100%; ~half of 1GB RAM used. I couldnt figure out how to stop it, THEN, I quit Act. Mon. and realized I have RAM and CPU %'tage in bar. It was jumping from 4% - 14%, and now between 4x% - 60% with Camino open. So what I did was remove Activity Mon. from startup items, and deselected most of my haxies. I now have 11GB HDD left.

Any suggestions? I really thought about copying everything to our 250GB PC, and starting over, but then I realized I'm on Mac! In Mac, you can undo things. I'll do what it takes to keep my PB going well! Love at first boot...

EDIT: BTW, I have RAM and CPU showed in bar right now.

[PKIDelirium]

Haxies = Evil.

[T-Man]

I like my windows sliding and Mac skinned....I'll try cleaning up a little, enable what I want, and see how everything goes...

[alcimedes]

You'll have better results in the GB. Moving.

[T-Man]

Ah, ok, thanks alcimedes.

[trevo]

My PB froze right on this page, mouse and all. Thats never happened to me before.

[T-Man]

Have I jinxed us?

[T-Man]

When trying to mount some DMGs, it says too many processes. I did turn ShapeShifter and Slider on, in ApplicationsEnhancer. BTW, now Acivity Monitor wont launch. I'll get system straight tomorrow...

[Brad]

Originally Posted by PKIDelirium Haxies = Evil.

Exactly.

You asked for it!

[T-Man]

Ugh! Anyway, restart got Activity Monitor working again, and my system is going VERY well now without Activity Monitor running, I still have over a quarter of free RAM and CPU is between 5% and 30%.

[T-Man]

I shouldn't've reenabled some of the haxies. Now, the app I am using/frontmost app is the only one present, the rest hide. Can anyone help me figure out which one it is (if I dont)? Exposé is quite useless now...

I have:
-Application Enhancer
Shape Shifter(Has been fine for months, though)
FruitMenu(Just downloaded)
WindhowShade X(Just DL'd)
Xounds (Just DL'd)

I was playing around with 'TransparentDock' before I realized this, but I doubt it is releated. Restart, maybe? What about just uninstalling everything but ShapeShifter? And 'Slider' for App Enhancer, thats really all I want...

[FFL]

Very Simple Solution:
-Archive & Install
-Swear off haxies.

Haxies == Crashies

[T-Man]

LOL, I see, I see.

I think...

[T-Man]

From what I know, I've all haxies disabled, but it is still happening. Though, if I go to says Camino, select the Camino Menu>Show all, everythign will come up. And I can switch between apps without making others hide via 4 corners. BUT, when I click on an app that is running in the Dock, it starts all over... any ideas?

[FFL]

see
here
and
here

[T-Man]

I see what Archive and Install is now; something new everyday. I'll look at the AN thread. THough with Archive and Install, it looks like it keeps Apple Software only? Thats what I'm getting...

[chucker]

Poor Unsanity. It has very talented developers, and the reputation of haxies really doesn't do them justice. I have yet to experience a problem that was definitely caused by a haxie.

[T-Man]

Hm... I assume its one of them, but arent sure. I repaired persmissions for the heck of it; nothing. I tried remembering what I did last, but have forgotten. But I seem to remember that it happened after I logged in from sleep. I must be not disabling/enabling something...

[Brad]

Originally Posted by T-Man THough with Archive and Install, it looks like it keeps Apple Software only?

Where'd you get that idea? Seriously?

Archive and Install leaves all applications intact. As long as your apps are in the Applications folder (where they should be) or in your home folder (and you choose to preserve user accounts when installing), they'll carry over just fine.

[T-Man]

Oh, ok. What about my ~40GBs of folders? Docs, Music, Movies,and their folders within?

[Brad]

Did you actually read the links FFL provided for you?

If you select "Preserve User and Network Settings," these items are preserved in any Mac OS X version (10.2 or later): Home folders in the Users folder

Please go read the page from his second link. It may be long, but it'll answer most if not all of your questions.

[T-Man]

Ok, I read a little and got distracted by the Bond marathon. I'll go now.

[T-Man]

Repairing your Hard Drive: In addition to repairing permissions, you should also attempt to repair the hard drive's filesystem if you experience crashes or other odd bugs. You can repair non-system drives in the Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app) program. Select your hard drive, switch to the "First Aid" tab, and press the "Repair Disk" button. To repair your primary "bootable" system hard drive, you must boot into single-user mode (hold the apple and 's' keys while rebooting). At the command prompt, enter the command: /sbin/fsck -fy This will force FSCK (Filesystem Check) to run and automatically repair any errors it encounters. When completed, if you see the message that your filesystem was modified, run the command again. Repeat until you receive a message that says your volume "appears to be OK." When complete, enter the command: reboot As an alternative to using the commands in single-user mode (ie. for the terminal-phobic), you can reboot from your Mac OS X Install CD/DVD and choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. Then, you can use the earlier instructions to repair any hard drive including your system's boot drive.

Could this work?

I almost thought that maybe it could even be 'Spark', since in a way its like when clicking an app on the Dock orders all others to hide... But I disabled it and smae thing.

[Brad]

It can't hurt to try.

That's for repairing damage to the filesystem itself. It's always a good idea to try that first since it's a quick and easy procedure. If you have misbehaving software scattered about, though, repairing the filesystem still won't fix that.

[T-Man]

Hm, hopefully I'm not screwed. (Well, if I am its not that bad...) Great, too, because my friend is coming over tomorrow and I want to show off a little, I'll have to keep everything smooth.

[curiousuburb]

Lurching around your tweaked-to-the-point-of-instability machine is rarely going to impress your friend, and certainly won't help Apple's reputation for stable, well designed gear. Solid, reliable computing is cooler than blinkenlights and 'trendy but crashy' doodad-of-the-week.

Better to Archive & Install and demo a smoothly purring PB.

If you really must mod the OS for the sake of feeling like you're some L33t H4XX0r, do it on an external FW drive that you boot to on occassion, preserving your internal in a state that you can actually use reliably.

And keep up the reading... sifting through wise words from a few of our resident expert geeks can save stress later.

[T-Man]

Yes, yes, I've ruined Apple's reputation a little. I guess all I really want is ShapeShifter and App Enchancer to make my windows slide, which it was doing quite well. I'll reparing my HDD first, than Archive & Install if needed. But it WILL keep all of my 'System' creater folders? Documents, Music, Movies, Pictures, etc? I'm always jumpy about things like this...

BTW, I hate l33t talk. I just like Shapeshifter for my personal experience; I had the iTunes look going...

PS: Of course I'll keep reading things from AN's expert geeks.

[PKIDelirium]

Yeah, I'd like to know that too. The Apple document doesn't say if it preserves the documents folders.

[T-Man]

If it doesnt, there is no way I'm doing it. I only have 11GB on an external drive, and I dont know if I want to copy all my things to PC...

BTW, HDD repair didnt work. I want to think it is the Dock alone, let me go see something.

[T-Man]

Someone!!!! Please Shoot Me!!!!!! I Had 'single Application Mode' Running In Transparent Dock!!!

<Runs as someone brakes down the door...>

Thanks for the help, I'm sure with me it'll help in the future. Now to put ShapeShifter and Slider back, and them only, I need to delete the others...

Timm