I LOVE my Mac, but I HATE how applications crash...

hi everyone,

i'll just be randomly doing something (not memory hogging, etc), and i'll get that dreaded message "the application xxxxx quit unexpectedly". i know it's not because of that specific application, because it happens in Comic Life, iTunes, Safari, etc.

What can I do to stop it?? This is the one Mac thing I hate.

Thanks.

Your apps shouldn't crash. You must have something else going on. Have you done the standard hard drive repairs? What OS are you running? What machine?

With respect, it's not a "Mac thing" - they didn't design OSX to crash. Do what Sherman says, repair your permissions and download Onyx and run the maintenance scripts.

I have a MacBook, 1.83 with 1gb ram.

i'm nervous that if i repair the permissions and download onyx, it won't work. does it target what causes the crashing?

sorry for the vague question, but can someone please shed some information on this or other things to do?

thanks

I run Onyx every week to keep things in check. Won't hurt it and will most likely fix the errors.

You can do the same thing without downloading Onyx by going into finder, utilities, applications, disk utility, repair permissions.

I had the occasional crash of a program, but had a few other issues going on (mainly with booting... irrelevant however). I booted from the OS X install disc and then repaired the hard drive - it had a few errors on it. Nothings gone wrong since then. No crashes, nothing wrong with booting, and my Mac is running a little faster too.

Well, I just previously did an archive and install before all the crashes.

Could that play a role (does it fix disk permissions)?

I think I repaired the hard drive earlier (using the built in disk utility), but it said there were no problems.

Aagh! Now i'm more stuck than ever!

Thanks, though, for all the responses!


EDIT: OR, COULD IT BE THE RAM THAT I BOUGHT ON EBAY?

Crashes, freezes and kernel panics happen for a wide variety of reasons. They can be the fault of permissions errors, directory errors, bad ram and weird programs that you thought were going to do something cool.
Archive & Install should have fixed the latter issue. Booting from your install disk and running Repair Disk will either fix directory problems or at least tell you that there is a serious problem. Running Disk Utility, Repair Disk Permissions after a normal boot will fix permission settings. Putting the original ram back in will soon let you know if it is the new ram.

Yes, like Sherman says, pull out the RAM you just installed and let your Mac run on the factory installed RAM for a while, see if this still occurs. If not, it is definitely the RAM you got off of eBay.

MacHeadCase said:

Yes, like Sherman says, pull out the RAM you just installed and let your Mac run on the factory installed RAM for a while, see if this still occurs. If not, it is definitely the RAM you got off of eBay.

Click to expand...

Well, I did the Apple Hardware Test and it said "no trouble found". Does that rule out RAM being a problem? Or can the RAM still cause the applications crash (and it wasn't detected in the AHT)?

Thanks!

If the problem is intermittent with your RAM and the test was run when the RAM was acting good, the test will not find it.

I personally would try out the RAM theory first by pulling the one you added and keeping the factory-installed module in for a few days and see how the Mac is holding up.

MacHeadCase, as well as everyone else,

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it; In order to show my gratitude I have given everyone who has posted in this thread a feedback.

After learning how ineffective the Apple Hardware Test can be, I ran another RAM test, Rember, which I believe is based off of a code called memtest. It confirmed, as well, that there were no problems with the memory. Do you guys think that this confirms there being no problems with the hardware?

I will run the repair disk off of the Install Disk now; hopefully that will end the crashing as well.
Edit: I ran the repair disk off of the install disk, and applications are still quitting. Does anyone have any other suggestions that could possibly end this quitting problem?

Once again, thanks! Your information has been extremely valuable while I try to solve this problem

Good luck with it and thanks for the feedback. I would probably do an uninstall of all non standard programs that you may have added to the system. Take it back to the basic Mac install. Then one by one reinstall and see if it is some sort of conflict problem. Like you I don't have an answer, but as I say that is what I would try next.
I would have just removed the ram and run the Mac to see if the ram was the problem. Are you sure it is seated properly in the ram slot? Just another thought....

I figure I'll give an update:
I have removed the ram, and put in the factory installed ones. the problem still persists.

I just don't know what to do. I LOVE Mac OS X, but to be honest, I never had crashing with Windows, and I am simply out of ideas on what to do. I have looked over everyones suggestions, and have done them all-to no avail (i.e. I know that it's not an external program because I have very few installed). If I posted up a crash report, would that help?

I was talking with a fellow Mac owner, who has owned them for a while, and asked him if an application ever shuts down on him and if he gets that message. He simply shrugged, and said something along the lines of "all the time". I can't imagine that this is something that most people's Macs do, but now I'm not so sure!

Once again, anyone have any ideas?

Milk is white unless it is chocolate milk....

I would keep the factory ram in the Mac and return it to where you purchased it and let them replace/fix it.

good luck

milk is white said:

I was talking with a fellow Mac owner, who has owned them for a while, and asked him if an application ever shuts down on him and if he gets that message. He simply shrugged, and said something along the lines of "all the time". I can't imagine that this is something that most people's Macs do, but now I'm not so sure!

Click to expand...

No, it isn't.

Once again, anyone have any ideas?

Click to expand...

Return it to where you got it and get them to fix/replace it, as MaDDoG says. It's obviously faulty.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/multipleappsquit.html read through here. With that said, you also can try, Library/input managers, try moving what's in there to your desk top, see if you still have the problem.