On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 07:10 PM, Larry Pohl wrote:
I'm not sure this is Peter's problem but this is from the Aladdin site:
Well, I'm b-a-a-ck! It would be nice if the problem was this simple. It
was far more serious. Here is what happened, and I am about to send off
a report to (1) MacFixit and (2) Aladdin.
The steps I took were as follows -
1. Paid for, and downloaded the Stuffit Deluxe update, tasking
advantage of the current low upgrade price for registered users.
2. Saw (but ignored - mea culpa) the little notice following
installation that in order for the software to work properly it would
be necessary to log out and log back in, Instead, I thought I'd just
launch it to see if there were any significant interface changes - I'm
a bit impatient that way. I had no intention of using it for anything,
but I couldn't see how a quick explore could do any harm. While looking
though the preferences, disaster struck. The screen went dim, and the
machine went into kernel panic: a desperately unpleasant sight.
3. Rebooted the computer, but the boot process would not proceed beyond
the apple icon in the middle of the screen. It did not even get as far
as the little spinning icon. Eventually the apple icon was replaced by
a No Entry icon (a circle with a diagonal bar). This was new.
4. Bad. Very Bad. Try some tools. Disk Warrior fixed a problem with the
Volume Wrapper, but otherwise found no serious problems. Didn't help.
Booted from MacOS X Disk and ran Disk First Aid. No problems reported.
Repaired permissions. Many repairs were made, but it still didn't help.
5. No option but a clean install of MacOS X (with archive, of course).
Clean install worked fine, upgraded back to 10.2.8 (with which I had
had none of the many reported problems).
6. Only problem now is, no .sit files will open. Do I have another go
at installing Stuffit 8, but behave myself this time? Maybe it was just
a very unhappy coincidence. Bit between the teeth, and off we go. This
time, no mucking around, no exploring, just install and reboot the damn
thing.
7. Back to step 3.
8. Repeat Steps 4 and 5. I have now uninstalled Stuffit Deluxe 8 (of
course, that entailed relaunching the Stuffit Deluxe 8 installer and
re-entering the installation code, by now a very scary exercise, just
so I could get to the Uninstall option) and gone back to SD 7.
9. So far, everything seems OK. I have currently gone back only as far
as MacOS X 10.2.6, but I'm not prepared to give SD8 a third chance
until I can get some assurances from Aladdin that this will not happen
again.
I have been delighted with the way MacOS X has, for me at least, upheld
its reputation as an OS which does not crash. Aladdin seem to have
found a way through. This would have to be the most unpleasant software
upgrade I have ever experienced. It has not done my nerves (nor, I
suspect, my System) one bit of good.
Time for a Bex and a bit of a lie down...
--
Peter Hinchliffe
Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer
Perth, ::::::::::::::::::::::::
Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Fax (618) 9332 0913
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Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to.
