Help! My Leopard is changing its spots!

March 7, 2008 7:12 PM

My iBook G4 is possessed! Please help perform an exorcism.

Suddenly many things are wrong with my iBook G4 running Leopard. There is a white box over the right-hand side of my menubar, and Spotlight, Airport, clock, and all my startup items (Quicksilver, WeatherDock, MenuCalendarClock) are gone.

I can't open many applications that might help (including Disk Utility, Finder Help, System Preferences). I cannot open Mail, but I am indeed online as I can open Firefox and Fetch and use them. I tried inserting the Leopard Disk and reinstalling, but I can't run the install program. I repaired permissions in single user mode (startup with Command-S, run fsck) and my hard drive seems to be fine.

I plugged in my backup drive and tried to restore from Time Machine. I get the Time Machine interface, but I can't click on any past backup windows.

When I place the mouse cursor over the white rectangle on the menubar, I get the beach ball. I am unable to shut down or logout without doing a hard restart. I can't get to System Preferences to create a new user to see if it's particular to my login.

Please help. I know Leopard requires more memory than I have, but I have been running it since release with next to no problems.

posted by annabellee to computers & internet (6 comments total)

From Help, here are the instructions for restoring your system from Time Machine:

To recover your entire system:


Connect your Time Machine backup disk to your computer.

If you’re restoring your system because of a problem with your startup disk, make sure the disk has been repaired or replaced.


Insert your Mac OS X Install disk, and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon.


In the Installer, choose Utilities > Restore System from Backup.


In the Restore Your System dialog, click Continue.


Select your Time Machine backup volume.


Select the Time Machine backup you want to restore.


Follow the onscreen instructions.
posted by lackutrol at 7:29 PM on March 7

Also, if that works you may want to consider:

Doing maintenance tasks with Cocktail. A lot of people swear by it.

Creating a bootable backup with Super Duper! This saved my bacon once and I should probably make these kind of backups more often.
posted by lackutrol at 7:35 PM on March 7

You mentioned issues "running the install program" for Leopard; do you mean the one on the disc while you're still booted off the hard drive?

If so, reboot the machine and hold C, and (unless there's something more serious wrong) you'll boot off the CD, at which point you should be able to do a time machine restore or a full reinstall.
posted by Remy at 7:38 PM on March 7

Is this white bar showing up after you first log in or does it happen in the middle of computing? Usually (for me at least) a beachball on the menu bar means Finder is going nuts. If it's happening after you first log in, a start-up item might be hanging or crashing and causing Finder to hang. Check you console logs.
posted by phrayzee at 8:25 PM on March 7

By the way, I tried doing a Time Machine restore just about a week ago and I wasn't able to select which backup I wanted to restore from until I restarted a couple of times back into the install DVD.
posted by phrayzee at 8:29 PM on March 7

I ended up restoring my last backup from Time Machine. I'm here to say it works perfectly with the Leopard disk--your computer will be exactly as it was when you last backed up. I didn't lose very much--thanks everyone.

PS It takes forever to reinstall from Time Machine but it does work. I'm going to back up every day now.
posted by annabellee at 9:26 PM on March 8