09-20-2005, 10:58 AM

OK - I was AT FIRST very impressed with the g4iMac I bought (yes, used - but in mint condition.) I then got this wild hair to buy the new OS-X.4 and installed it. Well, the issues started after I installed it and I am not sure what is causing the problems. Let me give youa brief history and see if you can help me.

>unpacked machine
>did the Move2Mac (fairly flawlessly) which moved about 2500 songs from iTunes and about 2800 pics plus a few other small docs
>Went in and realized that the original owners account still had his name in it - added a new user accout with our name on it.
>restared machine
>migrated the music into iTunes, recreated the playlists, etc and moved pics to ipic - created about 40 foldes with the appropriate pic sin them
>installed os-X, restared comp
>iTunes came on and music was not showing up - it was defaulting to the orginal user account's music folder
>tried to redirect the iTunes to MY music folder - no luck
>copied all music to the old user account - duplicated EVERY song, ARGH!
installed Widgets, customized
>installed windows for mac ($19.95 through my company - full versions of them (word, excel, entourage, etc) and then restarted computer.
>music is gone again and widgets are not customized anymore
>Somewhere in all this junk, the music was "lost again" and I tried to coipy it over to iTunes agian and I ended up receiving a message about "startup" memory running low.
>shutdown and restarted - read some forums and realized that all the music had been really duplicated on the hard drive
>went thtrough last night and deleted all the duplicate songs AGAIN (second time mind you) and them imported the pics into iPics again.
>Had to update the widgets again
>Woke up this morning and realized that I now have FOUR $%&^# copies of EACH picture in iPics and the machine is runnign VERy slow!

HELP HELP HELP!

My wife is about to strangle me b/c I have been living in front of this stupid machine trying to get it to run easily. I bought it for her b/c "macs are so easy" and stable -not been my experience. What I would LOVE is for someone to come into my machine (we call it "RASsing" in at work) and make the required chanegs to make this thing right. I know that the mac can do all this stuff easily, but I have been a Windows man for years and run Windows at work. Help me make some siple changes/adjustments and get this thing cleaned up, smoothed out and NON-duplicated!

Thank you for all of your help. PLEASE remember that I am mac-ignant! Talkto me as if I was your grandfather and you were having to walk him through things step by step - I am not that slow, but would rather have TOO much info than enough to screw myself into the ground further. "Taxonomy" as we call it at work (Mac HD>Applicatons>OS-X, etc) is very helpful

Sproles

09-20-2005, 11:08 AM

I would put in the OS X CD, re-install it completely, then start from scratch.

09-20-2005, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Sproles

OK - I was AT FIRST very impressed with the g4iMac I bought (yes, used - but in mint condition.) I then got this wild hair to buy the new OS-X.4 and installed it. Well, the issues started after I installed it and I am not sure what is causing the problems. Let me give youa brief history and see if you can help me.

>unpacked machine
>did the Move2Mac (fairly flawlessly) which moved about 2500 songs from iTunes and about 2800 pics plus a few other small docs
>Went in and realized that the original owners account still had his name in it - added a new user accout with our name on it.
>restared machine
>migrated the music into iTunes, recreated the playlists, etc and moved pics to ipic - created about 40 foldes with the appropriate pic sin them
>installed os-X, restared comp
>iTunes came on and music was not showing up - it was defaulting to the orginal user account's music folder
>tried to redirect the iTunes to MY music folder - no luck
>copied all music to the old user account - duplicated EVERY song, ARGH!
installed Widgets, customized
>installed windows for mac ($19.95 through my company - full versions of them (word, excel, entourage, etc) and then restarted computer.
>music is gone again and widgets are not customized anymore
>Somewhere in all this junk, the music was "lost again" and I tried to coipy it over to iTunes agian and I ended up receiving a message about "startup" memory running low.
>shutdown and restarted - read some forums and realized that all the music had been really duplicated on the hard drive
>went thtrough last night and deleted all the duplicate songs AGAIN (second time mind you) and them imported the pics into iPics again.
>Had to update the widgets again
>Woke up this morning and realized that I now have FOUR $%&^# copies of EACH picture in iPics and the machine is runnign VERy slow!

HELP HELP HELP!

My wife is about to strangle me b/c I have been living in front of this stupid machine trying to get it to run easily. I bought it for her b/c "macs are so easy" and stable -not been my experience. What I would LOVE is for someone to come into my machine (we call it "RASsing" in at work) and make the required chanegs to make this thing right. I know that the mac can do all this stuff easily, but I have been a Windows man for years and run Windows at work. Help me make some siple changes/adjustments and get this thing cleaned up, smoothed out and NON-duplicated!

Thank you for all of your help. PLEASE remember that I am mac-ignant! Talkto me as if I was your grandfather and you were having to walk him through things step by step - I am not that slow, but would rather have TOO much info than enough to screw myself into the ground further. "Taxonomy" as we call it at work (Mac HD>Applicatons>OS-X, etc) is very helpful

Sproles

Seems like the first guy didn't clean install. I would reformat the HD and do a fresh install of Tiger. Then install your programs and music and what not. Backup stuff you may have put on there or that came pre-installed that you don't have discs for. Other than that I can't really tell you much more, besides maybe Repairing Permissions in the Disk Utility and zapping the Pram. But do that only after you see if the machine is still running a bit slow after you re-install Tiger.

09-20-2005, 11:15 AM

OK - IF I do the reinstall...how is the easiet way to backup on the machine? I can burn DVDs (came with a burner) - will that work? Is it as easy as drag and drop on a burner icon? Please advise.

I would LOVE to have other suggestions and options....please!

09-20-2005, 11:21 AM

What stuff do you have on the machine that you need to backup? Burning stuff to CD or DVD would probably be the easiest way.

09-20-2005, 12:32 PM

Mainly music and pics - everyting else I could live w/o or have the cds for. WHAT exactly would I have to re-install? OS-X, MacWindows...what else?

09-20-2005, 09:52 PM

You would have to re-install everything you want to use, The OS, Office for Mac, and any other software you want, all your music, photo's and documents.

09-20-2005, 09:57 PM

Yeah, copy all data (songs etc.) to CD and you'll have to reinstall all applications. A clean format and fresh OS install should have you back up and running with no problem.

09-24-2005, 06:22 PM

how much ram do you have.Tiger needs a minimum 256 mb.

09-29-2005, 08:39 AM

I have 256 and I have done the "reload" and it is working MUCh better now. Everything is where it is supposed to be and it seems to have erased everything from the previous owner. I lot some music from the transfer b/c of a loading error on the DVDs that I burned, but almost 90+% of the data that I needed made it fine. ALL the pics made it OK - thankfully - my wife would have killed me if I had lost any pics of the kids. Music is no big deal I guess.

The 256mb issue MAY explain why the machine is running somewhat slowly when I start it up from resting for a few hours. Any suggestions on how to MAXIMIZE the speed?