Crazy problems after upgrading to Leopard. Can you help?

Question

I have a PowerMac G5, 1.8 dual processors. It came with 256MB of RAM, which I removed and replaced with 2GB of Crucial RAM soon after purchasing the computer nearly four years ago. I added a 250GB Maxtor hard drive to the 60GB original two years ago. I used the Maxtor drive for storage. Everything ran perfectly before Leopard and iLife ’08 installation.
Prior to installation, I cleaned off the 250GB Maxtor hard drive, and then installed Leopard to it using only the installation instructions on the disk. (FYI, I bought both programs from a local Apple store.) When prompted, I had it bring over the software and files from the original hard drive. My idea was to clean off the original, 60GB hard drive, and use it for storage. Due to problems galore, I have not done that.
When I waken my computer from an all-night Sleep mode, the following happens:
iWeb ’08 will load, but I cannot save anything to it.
Safari will load and immediately freeze.
Firefox will not load because it reports that it is already open.
Entourage will open initially, but then report it cannot open virtually any functions.
Word for Mac will open, but nothing can be saved.
iPhoto will open, but it cannot be used.
This is how it goes for every program—none are useable.
Though I attempt to use the Force Quit option, programs will not close. I am forced to do a hard quit—holding down the power button until the computer powers off. Upon reboot, all programs work fine. The trouble seems to occur after going into Sleep mode.
Just now I used the Disk Utility program, which upon completion, reported the following:
Verify permissions for “Whopper” (the name of the 250GB hard drive)
ACL found but not expected on “Library.”
Permissions verification complete
Repairing permissions for “Whopper”
ACL found but not expected on “Library.”
Permissions repair complete
I am now running a test on the RAM, using Rember, as suggested in another thread. –All tests passed.
So, there you have it.
Suggestions?

Answer 1

TheRever wrote:
You're not kidding, are you? Can I choose door number 2? To say that I'm disappointed and disillusioned would be insufficient. I've done precisely what I learned at a local Apple Store.
Sorry, I'm not kidding. But it isn't that big a deal. You are probably just frustrated and disillusioned based on your experiences with your flaky install. Try to remember how you felt about upgrading to Leopard before. That optimism is still warranted, with a little effort.
I'm sure Apple's official instructions work fine 99% of the time, but there is no way that Apple or anyone can guarantee an automatic upgrade. That is why Apple always says to have a good backup before any upgrade.
Would you translate what you instructed me to do? I don't know how to re-partition my original drive, nor do I know how to do a default MacOS X installation. It reads like I'm going to get a virtually naked machine, with none of the settings or files from before. Is that correct?
Yes. That is correct. You start with a naked drive and install everything from scratch. Your machine will be "as if" it came from the factory with Leopard installed.
You can boot off of the Leopard install DVD and run Disk Utility from the Tools? menu and delete partition on your "Whopper" drive. Then, return to the installer and just accept all the defaults. You don't have to worry about "upgrade install" vs. "archive & install". This will give you a fresh system.
Is it possible to wipe-out what I have done on the newer hard drive (250GB), and go back to the original 60GB drive? Is it possible to start again, or are the files on that drive now converted to the new? Does that make sense?
It would be ideal if you could throw away everything on the new drive. You can always copy off any new or modified files and restore those later. It sounds like you haven't been able to do much on Leopard anyway. It also sounds like you still have your 60 GB original, pre-leopard backup, which is a very good thing.
There may be some people who will tell you to do an "Archive and Install" to install a new 10.5. That will probably work too. You will have to resist the temptation to go into the archived area and just start copying files back. That would likely put you right back where you started. The same goes for any of the "migration" tools. For all I know, they work great 99% of the time. I've never tried them and I've had problems 0% of the time. The reason I always recommend a re-partition is because it guarantees you have a factory install. It makes restoring more difficult, but I consider that to be a good thing.
Here is my recommendation:
1) Make sure you have a backup of your current boot drive
2) Boot from from install DVD
3) Use Disk Utility to re-partition boot drive
4) Reinstall MacOS X using default options
5) Reinstall any applications
6) Setup user environment the way you want
7) Copy over your old user and data files into a quarantined location.
8) While maintaining backups of your new preferences and settings files, selectively restore your old files. These are things like your old Address book, your old Mail folder, and 3rd party application preferences files that contain license codes, etc.
Step 1-5 will take a couple of hours. Step 6, 7, and 8 may take a few days to get sorted out the way you want.