(I also posted this on the Mac-L listserv, but because there's more likely
to be Entourage expertise here, I thought a duplicate posting here was
warranted).
Tale of Woe ahead.
My environment: Mac Pro 2008 (Dual 2.8 GHz Quad Core); OSX 10.6.2; 6 GB RAM
My Mac Pro suddenly became unusable about two hours ago. I was reading my
mail in Entourage (Office 2008, Entourage Web Services Edition, fully
updated). Many windows from many applications were open on my screen.
Activity Monitor's window was open on my second display.
In Entourage, I read, filed, and erased several messages. Then, when I
clicked on one Email folder containing an unread message, a modal dialog
popped up, stating:
"Entourage cannot open the item due to an error.
An unknown error has occurred in Entourage."
Clicking OK in the alert dialog would change the highlighted item in the
Entourage main window from "Inbox" to the selected mail folder, but I
couldn't do anything else with Entourage's main window. I could move the
alert dialog but couldn't dismiss it.
At the same time as the alert dialog appeared from Entourage, some sort of
Log window appeared behind all the other open application windows. I assumed
that it also was spawned by Entourage's problem. However, that turned out
NOT to be the case. I couldn't change focus to it, but eventually I was
able to make it visible by selecting the "Hide" command from the Entourage
menu. (More on this in a bit).
Some processes continued. For example, I was downloading some files in my
news reader (Thoth). They finished downloading.
My Weather menulet (Meteo) continued to update.
The Time display in the Menubar continued to update.
I could do Spotlight searches (Command-Spacebar).
Command-Tab wouldn't do anything. My Menubar couldn't be changed from
Entourage as the active process, even though I could select and close
windows from other open apps.
Command-option-escape opened the "Force-Quit" window, but it contained no
items. I already had Activity Monitor open; I could select items in it, but
I couldn't terminate any processes.
I could select items in the Dock and view their Dock popup menus, but I
couldn't quit any of them from the Dock, nor could I open any new ones.
The Entourage main window and the partially visible log window were frozen
on the screen. I couldn't select them or deselect them.
After I discovered that I COULD close windows from other open applications
by clicking their window "Close" buttons one by one, I managed to reach a
point where the only windows left open on the screen were those from
Entourage and the Log Window that had popped up at the same time that
Entourage crapped out, The "Hide Entourage" item in its "Entourage" menu
wasn't dimmed, and when I selected that, the Entourage main window
disappeared. Having accomplished that, I discovered that the error log
largely hidden by the Entourage main window wasn't spawned by Entourage's
blow-up after all, but by another application crash-quitting, apparently at
the same time, since the log seemed to open in the background of my screen
just when Entourage froze.
It was titled "Problem Report for Synchronize ProX", and above the
scrollable list of data in that window was the caption "SynchronizeProX quit
unexpectedly. Click Reopen to open the application again. This report will
be sent to Apple automatically."
I couldn't scroll its list of logged items; clicking the buttons ("Hide
Details", "OK", and the default" Reopen" did nothing, nor did clicking a
"Help" button in the lower right corner of the log window
Clicking the name of the open user account (extreme right of the Menubar)
and selecting "Login Window" took me to the Login Window, but I couldn't
get back (couldn't open any other users, couldn't return to the active
user).
Clicking "Sleep" dimmed all 3 buttons in the login window, but the machine
didn't sleep, and after about 15 seconds the three buttons became clickable
again. Clicking "Shutdown" brought up the standard warning about losing
data, but allowed me to enter my admin name and PW, then shut down the
machine.
After restarting, I <option-clicked> on Entourage's item in the dock. The
database integrity test passed (I rebuilt it anyway). I launched Entourage,
opened its windows, and read mail. I was able to open the message I'd
clicked just before the blow-up, and this produced no problems.
Then, I launched Syncrhonize! ProX and my usual synchronization document. IT
behaved nominally synchronizing files from my ~/Documents folder with my
MacBook Pro.
Next, I booted from my Snow Leoparad installer disk and used Disk Utility to
verify my boot volume. It reported "Invalid Directory item count (it should
be 37 instead of 36)" under "Checking catalog hierarchy" and then (under
"Checking volume information") "The volume (my startup disk) was found
corrupt and needs to be repaired. It reported success repairing the boot
volume. Next, I repaired Disk Permissions. The log from permissions repair
included items I didn't understand, among them the following:
Warning: SUID file
"System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAagent.app/Contents/MacOS/A
RDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired."
A quick Google search indicates others have seen this message. One, on
Apple's support forum, says the question has been answered, but I certainly
saw no answer I could understand in the question (unless the report by some
posters that they did an archive and reinstall of the entire OS was the
answer!).
Finally, I ran "Verify Disk" a second time on the boot volume, and it
passed.
So, I have several questions:
1. Was this a "Windowserver Crash", generated by the OS itself?
2. If not, is there any way to tell whether Entourage or Synchronize! ProX
caused the crash?
3. Is there anything else I should do now? Diskwarrior repair? Disk Defrag?
Incantations from MacBeth?
While in Disk Utility, I discovered that I didn't have journaling turned on
either for my boot volume, or for my SuperDuper weekly clone of the boot
volume. I did so, for both. I assume that was a good and righteous thing to
do.
Just to be complete, I have LOTS of space available on my boot drive (half
of its 320 Gbytes); The OS applications involved are all current versions
with all released patches applied.
(One other thing I didn't mention in the other posts). I'm have a connection
to my office's Exchange Server and an IMAP connection to another business's
Exchange Server - they've provided me an address on their server for secure
and encrypted messaging with their staff - and during the time I was trying
to ferret out what was broken here, an alert popped up on my screen
reporting that I couldn't connect to their Exchange Server. I take this to
mean that some parts of Entourage were still running).
Jim Robertson
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