Is my computer dying a slow death? HELP!

Question

Hello all.
I have a Quicksilver that has been acting up the past couple of days. I first noticed it when I tried to make an archive of a file and promptly got an error message saying, "The archive bill of materials cannot be created". OK, not a huge deal, I just used DropStuff which worked fine. A few minutes after that, I opened a PDF and tried to print it. The print dialog box came up, I clicked print and then nothing. It was like I never even sent the file to my printer. No print que, no nothing. So I tried printing some other various documents from other programs and received the same result, nothing. Then Acrobat Pro started acting screwy. All of the menus at the top were grayed out. I couldn't even quit the program, not even using Apple + Q worked. So I had to force quit. I then restarted my computer. I started a few of my programs (I believe it was GoLive, InDesign and Entourage). Not long after that, the computer locked up. Nothing was responding at all.
Today I am encountering the same problems. So I ran Norton SystemWorks on the machine. I know, probably not the greatest disk utility, but that's all I have at this time other than disk doctor which didn't come up with anything. Norton SystemWorks came up with a few "major errors" and said that it fixed them. So I restarted and tried to print a simple, one line of text, email from Entourage and received the error, "An error occurred while printing. Not enough memory." I then tried to print the same document and got nothing at all. No error message, no printed document. Nothing.
I've tried logging out of my account and setting up a new one to see if the same problems occurred and the do. Not being able to create an archive and print anyway.
I'm at a loss. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
All of my OS and computer details below are correct.
Thanks in advance.
Seth
  Mac OS X (10.3.9)   PM G4: 800MHz/40GB/250GB/1.25GB RAM---15" PB G4: 1.5GHz/80GB/512MB---iPod 20GB

Answer 1

I would guess that there were corrupted system files or cache files causing the problem. However, now that you've used Norton's Systemworks the odds are good that the hard drive is now more messed up than before and possibly unfixable. Norton's utilities for the Mac are incompatible with recent versions of OS X and should never be used.
Depending upon the nature of the problem you may have some success with Disk Utility doing the following: Boot from your OS X Installer. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. Then select Disk Utility from the Installer menu. After DU loads select your OS X volume from the list on the left, click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or TechTool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
However, DU can only repair disk and directory damage, not file damage. So you may find that the hard drive is OK, but your system still won't work. In that case you need to do an Archive and Install which will let you install a fresh copy of OS X without erasing the hard drive.
If the hard drive is damaged and cannot be repaired by Disk Utility then you will need to reformat the hard drive. Because this will erase all your data you should backup your personal files first.
For disk repairs only use Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, or TechTool Pro. For general system maintenance I recommend TinkerTool System (shareware - www.versiontracker.com.) Maintaining regular backups would also make recovering from these problems much easier.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs the best third-party utility is Disk Warrior. DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption. However, DW is not yet compatible with Intel Macs. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 is Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility called Macaroni that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Deja Vu (Shareware)
4. SuperDuper (Commercial)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - not universal binary.)
6. LaCie SilverKeeper (Freeware - not universal binary)
7. RsynchX 2.1 and PsyncX 2.2.1 (Freeware)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.