Fun with OS reinstalls

[Mr. Lothario]

     So, ever since I "upgraded" to 10.3.4 from 10.3.3, my framerates in Call of Duty crashed. I went from a steady 30-40 depending on map under 10.3.3 to 10-40 with hard drops when enemies appeared in my line of sight under 10.3.4. Needless to say, my scores crashed at about the same time. Due to laziness, I never reinstalled to downgrade back to 10.3.3. 10.3.5 did not fix the problem, although it made the enemy loads slightly faster, which helped.

     Finally, last night, I got pissed off enough at CoD that I reinstalled Panther. Thus was the beginning of my tale of woe. I do an Archive and Install, as always. Once finished, I run the 10.3.3 Combo Installer, and then run Software Update (avoiding the update to 10.3.5, of course). Finally, I install Mouseworks, the driver software for my Kensington trackball, and *insert crashy squishy noise here* everything goes to shit. After installing Mouseworks and rebooting, my machine gets to the dark-apple-logo-on-gray-background screen, which is normally followed by the same screen with the spinning-lines activity icon as the kernel loads. Except the activity indicator never comes up. Ever. Installing Mouseworks causes my kernel not to load. Now understand, I've been using Mouseworks right along on this machine, without ever experiencing this. I've tried installing the version I was using, the newest version, older versions, poring over readmes, the Kensington site, and VersionTracker to find out if there's an incompatibility between 10.3.3 and certain versions of Mouseworks... nothing. It should work. I'm stumped and pissed. I'm currently in OS 9, deleting 200,000 files from two failed installs of Panther--my 6th and 7th failed installs, if I remember aright. This time, I'm going to try an Archive and Install without preserving the users and settings--I can transfer those manually, or re-enter the data if that turns out to be the problem. A friend of mine has a couple of external drive enclosures which should be arriving in the next day or so, so if all else fails, I can back up my data to an external drive and format the everloving shit out of my boot disk in the hopes of removing whatever low-level demons are making my life suck so much. Hopefully it won't come to that.

     Bah^2.

[seth]

    Due to laziness, I never reinstalled to downgrade back to 10.3.3. 10.3.5 did not fix the probleity indicator never comes up. Ever.

cant say you're lazy anymore !

[|MP|Cringe]

That royally sucks. Youre going to probably need to do at least a re-zero format, as i had to do when i tried to make my pb dual boot with linux and osx. After eight failed reinstalls of panther, rezeroing my drive made it all better.
.
Until this trip of mine to greece.  (Where im typing this in an internet cafe, btw)  

At JFK, the dumb-as-fuck security people made me take my baby out of its nice, padded bag, and sent the bag through the x-ray machine separately, followed by my (now unprotected) computer.  Not that the x-rays did anything to it, but the big metal rollers designed to handle bags shook the everlasting shit out of my internal hd, which now makes a nice, loud clicky noise and crashes after five minutes (since it cant read when it expects data). Nevertheless, i immediately bought a big external, managed to salvage my pictures and music, and will be ordering a new internal from here so that it will be waiting for me to install as soon as i get back (friday..lets see if anyone missed me, hm?)

/bitchy rant

Anyway, i too noticed that 10.3.4 fucked my framerates, so its a chance for me to revert to 10.3.3 as well. Good luck to us both, Loth.

[BFG]

At JFK, the dumb-as-fuck security people made me take my baby out of its nice, padded bag, and sent the bag through the x-ray machine separately, followed by my (now unprotected) computer.? Not that the x-rays did anything to it, but the big metal rollers designed to handle bags shook the everlasting shit out of my internal hd, which now makes a nice, loud clicky noise and crashes after five minutes (since it cant read when it expects data).

Ok omg... they made you put a highly sensitive piece of eletronic equipment througha  freaking metal detector? thats mighty thoughfull of them.

ps. good luck loth!

[Mr. Lothario]

     Currently running 10.3.3, no Mouseworks yet. Heh, I forgot how slow the 10.3.3 Safari is at displaying animated GIFs. I'm getting about 4 FPS posting this. Ah, there. Scrolled so the smilies are off the screen. Mkay, I guess it's time to try installing Mouseworks yet again. If this doesn't work, I'm just going to go back to 10.3.5 and hope that works. If not, I guess I'll just be watching a lot of anime until I can format this drive, since having to spin my trackball ten times to get the cursor across the screen is one of the most annoying things EVAR!!!11one

     Here goes nothin'.

[Mr. Lothario]

     Well, what the hell do you know? Two differences this time--no, three. First, Archive and Install without copying user data. Second, I did not upgrade to Quicktime 6.5.1. Third, I logged out and back in after installing Mouseworks (the latest version) but before restarting. What did it? My gut says Quicktime, but I'm not really inclined to do three more installs to test. At any rate, life seems to be good.

[|MP|Nomad]

I use the same driver software of Mouseworks for my kensigton Loth, and I never got these problems, so I'm thinking thats its not the mouse app.  Also, I liked the older version of of Mouseworks better, the older one allowed me to use the scroll wheel as a click and bring up my, custom made, list which included going to system prefs without having to go to apple menu, etc.  Now, it doenst allow me to make a custom list when clicking the scroll wheel, instead, it changes the direction of the scroll from Vertical to Horizontal, for when going to sites that a very big and have a horizontal scroll bar, which I can see is useful, but very seldomly happens...

[Mr. Lothario]

     Are you using the latest version, 2.5.1? I never use the wheel click, but IIRC, I noticed that it had options for more than just change direction.

[|MP|Nomad]

    Are you using the latest version, 2.5.1? I never use the wheel click, but IIRC, I noticed that it had options for more than just change direction.

Yes I am using the latest version.  IIRC?

[Mr. Lothario]

     If I Recall Correctly, noob.

[|MP|Nomad]

    If I Recall Correctly, noob.

ahh, no you can't change it, at least from what I can tell, the drop-down menu is greyed out and does not allow you to access the list....noob  

[Mr. Lothario]

     That seals it, you're a noob. No, you're the king noob. Switch to the "Scrolling" tab, and deselect "Wheel Button Changes Scrolling Direction" checkbox. Then switch back to the "Buttons" tab, and pull down your menu of happiness.

[|MP|Nomad]

I knew that