My mac is acting like windows... Help...

Question

Hey everyone. I've been having glitches with almost every single one of my application. And I think most of the problems comes are related to GUI. Adium dock icon and contacts on the contact list would stop updating; System Preferences would sometimes show up without icons, back, forward, show all, and search bar; Spaces has about 50% chance of having black backgrounds on a random space out of my 16 and sometimes the black screens pop up after I switch into another space, which would log me out of my computer and only show my cursor (then I would have to press and hold my power button for a restart); the battery bar has sometimes shown up without anything in the battery but the system is fully charged; Excel has been having problems opening files, saying that there are memory problems; quicksilver and speech recognition has been quitting suddenly; Photoshop, VLC, and other applications have been crashing.
I don't know what there is to do any more, most of these problems are gone after a restart but then it shows up again. Could this be related to me keeping my computer on at night (I use it as an alarm clock) or the 2 months where I've kept my hard drive at a constant 97% full? (I don't have an external large enough for backing up my computer, so if there is a lot of files that I need it to store, I don't have anywhere else to move it to...) Please also note that I've also applejacked my mac 2 weeks ago...
Message was edited by: hayson1991

Answer 1

You will need to run "Repair Permissions" from Disk Utility, within OSX or from install DVD.
But for the "Repair Disk" you can run fsck from safemode.
/sbin/fsck -fy <press return>
Once fsck has finished you should get a message similar to this:
** The volume (nameofvolume) appears to be OK
If fsck finds issues and alters, repairs, or fixes anything, it will display a message something like this:
*** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***
In this case continue to run the above fsck command until you get a message similar to this:
** The volume (nameofvolume) appears to be OK
I also recommend that you get a hold of an install DVD, as you will need it eventually. You can call Apple and have them send you a copy of the disk that came with your Mac, it will cost you around $30.00. Or if and when you need to reinstall you can always step up to Snow Leopard for $30.00.