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- Aug 27, 2009
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- Your Mac's Specs
- Dual 2Ghz G5 /10.3.9
Hi Folks: 2003 G5 dual 2GHz OSX 10.3.9
I was running EvoCam which records movement from a camera, with options to save a movie, clips, and uploading to a FTP site. It was running very slow, with some (not alot) of hard drive activity, but it almost stalls the computer. Activity Monitor says the program is hung. It's a long time quitting (minutes).
I had the EvoCam set up to record a movie clip each time it is run. What it does is rename all the files (I called them 'Timelapse') by bumping up the names with a number (timelapse1.mov then 2, 3, etc.), and the new one is 'timelapse.mov'. I had a bunch in the 'Movie' folder. I ended EvoCam and started reviewing some of the old clips and deleting most, thinking the renaming is taking too much time.. When I got up to 'timelapse20.mov', the hard drive started making the same noise, and all slowed down to a crawl. Something is wrong with the file apparently. I had started Activity Monitor before and it was saying Finder was hung. I let it sit and work for a while but it didn't come out of it. I had the option to force-quit finder, so I tried. It didn't quit and I ended up hanging on the power. When I restarted it, I had no icons on the screen, but just my background. The mouse moved, but the dock wouldn't open (unhide). I couldn't even open the CD tray with the eject key. I shut it off (hanging button), booted with the eject key, opened cd tray, put in the hardware DVD, and booted again with 'C' held.
Here's the goofy part. Disk Utility could find nothing wrong with the hard drive. But I did verify and repair the permissions and tried to boot again. Same thing. No icons or dock. I still had the Hardware DVD in the drive. I let it sit as the hard drive was still making a bit of noise every 10 seconds or so. Sometimes the DVD will spin up. Then I had the pinwheel spinning. Over several minutes, the top bar started coming up! There was the time! Then the whole bar was there! About 10 minutes later, the icons started to pop up! Then the dock worked! Wow! I tried to scroll the Movies folder, but it only scrolls down to 'timelapse1.mov' (the next one is 20) and the drive starts it thing again. After a couple of minutes, the finder resets to Home at least. I can't scroll this folder in any view. I'd delete the file if I could. I have 2 hard drives, so I renamed the folder to 'movie2' and started copying it to the other hard drive. It's taking a while. .. OK. the whole folder copied with the files. timelapse20.mov is there but it's only 16k and will not open. I deleted it on that drive with no problem. Same for 'timelapse21,mov' which is the last in the series. Still can't delete it on the boot drive. Hang on. I'm going to try to delete the whole folder. OK. It deleted and I emptied the trash. Went quickly. Now copying back the copy from the other drive. Renamed it back to Movies, and the folder is fine. Go figure.
Lesson learned, keep a good spare hard drive! Just copying the folder at least fixed the hanging, if not fixed the file. Maybe this old hard drive is about to kick the mac bucket.
Sorry for the breathy descriptions. Has anyone ever seen this? I remember folder issues something like this before 10.3.9. But then, I think the finder just wouldn't scroll to the end.
Thanks!
Harry
I was running EvoCam which records movement from a camera, with options to save a movie, clips, and uploading to a FTP site. It was running very slow, with some (not alot) of hard drive activity, but it almost stalls the computer. Activity Monitor says the program is hung. It's a long time quitting (minutes).
I had the EvoCam set up to record a movie clip each time it is run. What it does is rename all the files (I called them 'Timelapse') by bumping up the names with a number (timelapse1.mov then 2, 3, etc.), and the new one is 'timelapse.mov'. I had a bunch in the 'Movie' folder. I ended EvoCam and started reviewing some of the old clips and deleting most, thinking the renaming is taking too much time.. When I got up to 'timelapse20.mov', the hard drive started making the same noise, and all slowed down to a crawl. Something is wrong with the file apparently. I had started Activity Monitor before and it was saying Finder was hung. I let it sit and work for a while but it didn't come out of it. I had the option to force-quit finder, so I tried. It didn't quit and I ended up hanging on the power. When I restarted it, I had no icons on the screen, but just my background. The mouse moved, but the dock wouldn't open (unhide). I couldn't even open the CD tray with the eject key. I shut it off (hanging button), booted with the eject key, opened cd tray, put in the hardware DVD, and booted again with 'C' held.
Here's the goofy part. Disk Utility could find nothing wrong with the hard drive. But I did verify and repair the permissions and tried to boot again. Same thing. No icons or dock. I still had the Hardware DVD in the drive. I let it sit as the hard drive was still making a bit of noise every 10 seconds or so. Sometimes the DVD will spin up. Then I had the pinwheel spinning. Over several minutes, the top bar started coming up! There was the time! Then the whole bar was there! About 10 minutes later, the icons started to pop up! Then the dock worked! Wow! I tried to scroll the Movies folder, but it only scrolls down to 'timelapse1.mov' (the next one is 20) and the drive starts it thing again. After a couple of minutes, the finder resets to Home at least. I can't scroll this folder in any view. I'd delete the file if I could. I have 2 hard drives, so I renamed the folder to 'movie2' and started copying it to the other hard drive. It's taking a while. .. OK. the whole folder copied with the files. timelapse20.mov is there but it's only 16k and will not open. I deleted it on that drive with no problem. Same for 'timelapse21,mov' which is the last in the series. Still can't delete it on the boot drive. Hang on. I'm going to try to delete the whole folder. OK. It deleted and I emptied the trash. Went quickly. Now copying back the copy from the other drive. Renamed it back to Movies, and the folder is fine. Go figure.
Lesson learned, keep a good spare hard drive! Just copying the folder at least fixed the hanging, if not fixed the file. Maybe this old hard drive is about to kick the mac bucket.
Sorry for the breathy descriptions. Has anyone ever seen this? I remember folder issues something like this before 10.3.9. But then, I think the finder just wouldn't scroll to the end.
Thanks!
Harry
