"installer not responding" issue

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well here's another fine mess...

more and more frequently, when I go to install an application, the Installer app kicks into gear and walks me through the steps to install (where and for which users) and then it gets to the "Type your password" screen.
At this point (I have discovered) if I move the mouse off the "password" window and back over the "Installer" window, even without clicking it, I get the spinning colour wheel. If i continue to move the mouse completely off these two windows and just hover it over the desktop, the wheel goes away.
If I type in my authorisation password, the Installer "freezes" and had to be "force quit" - which takes a few minutes.
So far, I have run fsck, and applejack and onyx. I have started in "safe" mode and I still have the same issue after each of these "fixes".
I have one hard drive in this iMac (24" 2.66Ghz, 4GB ram Intel) and it's divided into two separate drives, both running the latest Snow leopard.
If I reboot into the other drive, the installer works fine.

Could this be something as simple as a corrupted prefs/plist file that I can discard and replace or is it more complicated than that?

Any ideas?
 
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well here's another fine mess...

more and more frequently, when I go to install an application, the Installer app kicks into gear and walks me through the steps to install (where and for which users) and then it gets to the "Type your password" screen.
At this point (I have discovered) if I move the mouse off the "password" window and back over the "Installer" window, even without clicking it, I get the spinning colour wheel. If i continue to move the mouse completely off these two windows and just hover it over the desktop, the wheel goes away.
If I type in my authorisation password, the Installer "freezes" and had to be "force quit" - which takes a few minutes.
So far, I have run fsck, and applejack and onyx. I have started in "safe" mode and I still have the same issue after each of these "fixes".
I have one hard drive in this iMac (24" 2.66Ghz, 4GB ram Intel) and it's divided into two separate drives, both running the latest Snow leopard.
If I reboot into the other drive, the installer works fine.

Could this be something as simple as a corrupted prefs/plist file that I can discard and replace or is it more complicated than that?

Any ideas?

It may well be a simply matter of a corrupt prefs file, though I'm hard pressed to think of which exact .pref file it could be. The simplest thing to do to help prove this is to try creating a new user account and log into that. If the installer does not freeze while under that user account, then the problem most certainly lays somewhere with your usual user account.

If you are able to successfully use your new user account just fine, then I would start back with the regular user account, make a backup copy of the Preferences folder from your user's Library, then delete the Preferences folder and log out/in. This will reset ALL of your preferences for everything (including Safari bookmarks, for example, so be sure you made your backup!!), but no sweat just yet. Try an installer. If it now works, then we know the problem lays in the Preferences and the hard part is narrowing it down. It could well be a hidden one… there's no easy way to tell short of trial and error. I had a really odd issue once with a widget that was acting up, and I eventually traced it to a hidden .pref file that had absolutely nothing to do with that widget or the app it was tied to.
 
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Thanks but isn't that the creation of a new user account effectively the same as booting in safe mode?
 
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Okeydokey - so I opened up System Prefs and went to add a new user account. Then, of course, to unlock the prefs, I had to "type my password to allow system preferences to make changes.
and I did
and it froze "System preferences not responding" message and so I had to do another force quit.

what next?
 

chscag

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what next?

Try a reinstall of Snow Leopard on the partition that's giving you problems. Reinstalling Snow Leopard does not destroy data nor remove or change applications. It does, however, overwrite system files. If the reinstall goes well and the problem is gone, run software update to upgrade Snow Leopard to the latest version.

Of course it's recommended that you do a Time Machine backup prior to the reinstall.
 
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Agreed with chscag. Perhaps you had a major update that didn't "quite" install correctly, leading to some files getting corrupt. Another distinct concern though is perhaps some critical system files are corrupt because your hard drive is failing and they are in the bad area. I would consider making sure you have backed up anything important, then look into testing the hard drive more throughly.
 
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Thanks folks - I decided to let techtool 5 run overnight and also defragged the livin' daylights outta the drive.
That seems to have fixed it - for the moment.
But I DO think I'll follow your advice and reinstall Snow anyway (after a TM backup).
How does that work - I've never re-installed before, I've always just done a clean install whenever I get a new drive... do I choose the "archive" thingy?
 

chscag

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Snow Leopard does not have an archive and install feature so you can't choose that. Just boot with the SL DVD and install the OS. As I mentioned, reinstalling Snow Leopard does not remove or overwrite any of your applications, data, or documents. It only replaces the system files that make up Snow Leopard. After reinstalling, run software update to bring SL back up to 10.6.7.
 

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