Member Avatar for jql999

Hi All,

I haven't seen this problem discussed before so here goes...

I have a G5 running OS X v10.4.11.

I'm using adobe creative suite, microsoft office and entourage for mail. (Entourage is not my choice - I'm stuck with it.) I have both Safari and Firefox installed.

The most common problem I have is that Entourage will not quit properly. Once it's open, I have to Force Quit - after which it will not open at all until I Restart the system. I sometimes have similar problems with DreamWeaver, but it's not as bad.

It is not uncommon for me to have photoshop, entourage, dreamweaver, safari and/or firefox, transmit and some office program open at the same time. This is pretty typical for anyone trying to do web development. Quite often I get "stuck" on one app and I can't switch back and forth.

I'm having to restart at least 3 or 4 times a day - which I haven't had to do since I was using Windows95. Our support guy is a PC guy that doesn't really know macs very well. His typical answer is "Well don't have that many apps open at once." Typical.
Others with the same configuration do not have this issue.

At one point my account got corrupted somehow - so that when I logged in the dock and finder never opened. I just got a blank screen. The hack - pardon me - solution was to create another account with a different name.

Since no one can figure out what is going on, the answer is always to wipe my hard drive and start over - which we've done twice in the past three months already.

Has anyone out there seen any of these issues? I know it can't just be me.

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Dani AI

Generated

Short summary and focused triage based on the thread: reports multiple apps (Entourage, Adobe, browsers) freezing and an account that once booted to a blank desktop; ’s suggestion to test with a second account and check Console was on target. The fact that swapping drives made the machine behave again strongly points at hardware or disk-level corruption, but software/identity issues can produce identical symptoms — so both paths need a quick, ordered check.

A practical triage sequence to follow (in order):

  • Create a clean test user and run the same workload to confirm user-vs-system scope.
  • Boot Safe Mode (hold Shift at startup) and repeat; Safe Mode disables login items and many third‑party extensions.
  • From a healthy environment (another boot volume or external drive) run Disk Utility’s Verify/Repair and check S.M.A.R.T. status.
  • Use Activity Monitor and Console to look for repeated errors, huge page‑out activity, or hung processes; save relevant Console output (timestamps) for support.
  • Run Apple Hardware Test / extended RAM checks and inspect fans/PSU for heat or power problems.

App-specific and account fixes: Entourage and some Adobe components can corrupt databases or prefs. Back up mail identities and then rebuild the Entourage identity using the Microsoft Database Utility (in the Microsoft Office folder). Before nuking things, archive ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Caches for the affected apps so a targeted reset can be performed without wholesale reinstallation.

If swapping drives fixed the problem, present the saved Console logs and AHT/S.M.A.R.T. results to justify hardware replacement — recurring I/O errors, S.M.A.R.T. failures or AHT faults are objective evidence. When reinstalling, prefer a staged approach: bare OS → test → add one major app at a time to identify the culprit rather than immediately restoring all user data.

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Member Avatar for Rick150

You need first to find out if it is a user profile problem. Set up another account and log on to this one, it's always handy to have this. Use this account and see if it is only user specific or a system config problem. Another thing you should do is open 'Console' found under Applications, Utilities. Run it and have a look at the log, it will tell you what is causing the problem, maybe.

Member Avatar for jql999

I suspect that it was a user-profile problem - but maybe not. When they wiped the hard drive and re-installed everything, they were still having problems. They ended up swapping my hard drive with one from a box with a bad power supply and it seems to work now.

What they really need to do is bite the bullet and buy some new machines, but the fear is that requisitioning new Macs will beg the Mac vs PC question, and in an agency run by bean-counters...

Thanks for the tip about Console.

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