And her head has no room

[sovay]

In which I pay for all of yesterday's grinning. There's karmic balance; there really is. I have a migraine, but there is a greater problem: my iTunes library has eaten itself. No music. I'm not quite sure how this happened, and it puzzles me greatly, but I think my computer and I are both heading for the doctor's in the near future.*

On the bright side, the ever-impressive eredien has created livejournal icons from The Cuckoo, so that I now have a terrific icon of Psholtii looking pretty much the way I feel right now. I need a paid account just so I can support my growing icon habit.

Also, since I got into an offline argument about Keats yesterday, am I wrong? Are there reasons I should really like him? I'll give him "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," because I have a soft spot for demon lovers a mile wide, but otherwise I'm mostly left wanting to read Matthew Arnold or Swinburne or any other Romantic but Wordsworth. Distract me. Please.

*I didn't mention before that a few days ago, my mail program also cannibalized one of its own folders, and I lost pretty much all of my writing-related correspondence since 2003. This was not such a disaster, since I'm obsessive and paranoid when it comes to certain areas of my life, and so I had most of the files backed up. I don't think there's anyone's address I lost that I couldn't get back one way or another, and important things like contracts and acceptances and edits are all recorded elsewhere. But I really, really don't want my laptop to crash and take something actually vital with it, say, this lecture I'm working on for Wednesday, or all of my finalized stories since 1999, so . . .

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

What's your hardware spec?

[sovay]

iBook G4 from early 2004, I believe. It's running OS X 10.3.5 and has been crashing with depressing frequency lately, although I keep very little on the machine other than music and written text and don't normally run more than two applications at once. (Curiously enough, it has never crashed while playing a DVD. Microsoft Word, however, is fair game any time of day.) Any other info you need?

very fast look at your problem

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

You don't mention your processor speed, and so I can't do a search for syndromic, widespread problems like yours.

Assuming you haven't had problems until now:

A. Consider updating to 10.4. I know, I know, $. This is most likely to solve everything without further tears. Install the disks and then run Software Update to pick up any maintenance and security releases, which will put you at 10.4.3.

Later 10.3 versions have well-known instabilities, and successive versions, though they correct known problems, introduce new ones. I updated my G3/900 to 10.3.5 and began seeing crashes and strange Finder behavior, which indicated a fundamental problem: files vanished, stuff wouldn't open, or would open and close instantly, etc. I replaced 10.3 with 10.4 and have not had a crash since (has been up continuously).

Install MS Office when you have updated. Versions 10 and 11 seem to be equally compatible with 10.4.

"Losing" files, in other words not "seeing" them in listings, does not mean they are overwritten. It can mean a directory is slightly screwed up.

Unix is robust, but programmers are not foolproof.

1. Your system could have become corrupted. Make a complete backup of applications and reinstall only the vanilla system from your original disks. Run software update. Reboot. Put some files back on and start shoving data around to see what happens. Reinstall Office from scratch, do not write it over from your backup. Just move your personal directory, if at all possible, which should contain all of your documents, photos, and music files. The beauty of the way the directory system works is that if you do keep all your personal files in a directory and do not scatter them into, say, the Applications folder, you have a far easier time backing up. Your mail, for example, can live in a folder in your personal directory.

Forgive me lecturing if you know this, a lot of people don't, and some older Mac programs will still store, say, your mail and its attachments, in the application folder by default.

The best response to "system corrupted" is still A, install 10.4.

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[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

If the problem begins again after a clean system and software install, the next possibilities are:

2. Your hardware is corrupted.
2A. Worst case. Your disk might be bad. Use the Disk Utility functions to test it.

Bad disks are far rarer than they used to be, but not unknown.

If your disk tests bad: You have backups. You will need to get a new disk. You can use an external disk (my preferred backup mode) to toddle along until you can afford to/take time to get this. If you are still under warranty/Applecare, Apple owes you a new disk. (They may fuck your computer up putting it in, but I do not recommend that you try this yourself unless you are experienced in playing Operation and in taking apart interesting fiddly bits of computers.) Absolutely have backups, backups, and more backups before sending it off to Apple. If your disk tests bad and you do not have warranty/Applecare coverage, buy a new computer.

2B. Very worst case. Something on your board is bad. I had a lemon 700 that had a bad processor---and apparently 90% of 700s had a bad processor. It subtly, slowly corrupted everything running through it, in an iterative process, until the file broke. I had weird bugs like dictionary entries disappearing, files vanishing, crashes without end. It took more than a year for Apple to admit this was unacceptable. They did send a new computer after breaking, successively, the latch, the Airport antenna, the screen... all whilst trying to fix CPU that was bad by replacing the disk, the motherboard, etc. Went through three motherboards. All bad.

A bad chip is nearly impossible to detect with standard testing utilities, and no one does component-level repairs.

So, if the other stuff does not work, buy a new computer. Seriously. Use it while you badger Apple to fix the old one. Apple will not provide a loaner. Buy a refurb from them; they're cheaper than new and better-tested, so more likely to be solid. Sell it if/when you get your computer back in working order. I'm quite serious. I assume this is a tool you need every day.

If you still have Applecare/warranty coverage, you can call Apple and spend some time with their tech support people. Keep copious notes of anything, however trivial, they say to you; note down any tests they have you do and the results. This can save time if you have to call again and they try to run you through the same hoops.

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[sovay]

Thank you for this: you didn't have to, and you're amazing.

Re: exceeded comment length, sorry, here's the rest

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

C'est rien. If someone can benefit from my suffering, it is not in vain. I have still not figured out what practical use my "blind" 900 iBook can be to me....