Tiger problems
April 30, 2005 by Mike Wendland
UPDATE May2, 2005 11:13 am EST If you follow the comment trail, you can see that the issue finally resolved. It clearly had something to do with user/prefs. Onward and upwards.
I’m beginning to rethink my glowing review of Tiger.
I’m encountering a growing list of frustrations with the upgrade.
The worst involves Tiger and my Airport networks at home and work - on a G5, a PowerBook and a G5 iMac. On bootup, the Internet connection is lost and needs to be re-established from the Airport utility setup. This happens everytime I turn on the machines. Sometimes, the connection just drops after working fine for awhile and the whole process must be repeated.
Also, my printer randomly stalls in the middle of print jobs. Since it’s tied in with Airport, I’m suspecting the same glitch that drops the Internet is causing it.
I’m also noting slowdowns in how Mail works and, in general, opening Web pages.
iSync no longer works between my Palm-based Treo 650. (UPDATE… I reloaded iSync and that seems to have restored the Palm operation.).
Final Cut Pro seems fine except in exporting a project to a medium broadband sized QuickTime movie. A process that took 2 minutes or so pre-Tiger now takes 8 minutes.
Anyone else noting these kinds of issues with Tiger? I see the start of some similar connection complaints scattered elsewhere in some forums but no fixes as of yet.
The mail slowness is killing me!! It is far, far slower than the panther version. Any relief in sight?
I’ve been unable to get into the workspace for FCP and Motion. They start, but never open into the app.
Palm desktop broke as did a few other minor things, but the Apple Pro Apps should not break!
You guys all repaired permissions after the update? Just wondering…
Mike- are you using WEP or WPA encryption? I have seen some info link a possible problem to WEP, an encryption key change may solve the problem, or a switch to WPA (which is much better anyway). If you’ve tried both kinds, try no encryption. Also, what type of base station are you using?
I used the upgrade option in the Tiger installer. I usually do a clean format and install or archive and install but decided to try the upgrade option. No major problems for me. Everything works fine.
Well, I did a straight upgrade and have had minimal problems with my G4 iBook, just a couple of minor reinstalls, but my G5 iMac is a different story. I’m now in the process of restoring from one of my backups so that I can do a new archive and install. Biggest problem is that it would not reboot with my external firewire drives running. And before anyone says anything, I did all of the usual disk repair, permissions repair things. The only thing I didn’t do was reset the nvram.
I have been running Tiger since Friday evening and have used the PowerBook G4 17″ on three different Airport networks since then (I did an Archive and Install and had it keep user settings). I haven’t had any trouble connecting or reconnecting to those networks after waking from sleep.
– Gary
I’ve reset Airport settings to WPA, loaded the latest software for Airport base stations and the problem persists.
Whenever I boot up, the network is unaccessible. I have to run network diagnostics to reestablish.
I am about to uninstall Tiger… it has caused so much trouble to me that it reminds me of Windows. Never thought I’d say that about an Apple OS….
I assume you have done all the usual troubleshooting:
(1) Repaired permissions.
(2) Used DiskWarrior or Disk Utility to make sure nothing is wrong with your disk.
(3) Deleted various networking prefs to make sure they are not corrupted.
(4) Logged in as a different user to make sure it isn’t a user-specific corruption.
Tiger isn’t perfect, but I haven’t read very many issues like those you are having. I also recommend checking out Apple’s support pages for Tiger. There is a networking forum. Let me know if you need to know where to find them.
Good luck.
– Gary
I’ve noticed lackluster Wifi connections with my home setup and PowerBook G4 since installing Tiger. It seems like my connection rate goes down to zilch and I have to go back to my System Preferences to reselect the network to give it a nudge. I’m using a third party PMCIA wireless card with my Netgear wireless router. It doesn’t seem to keep the consistent speed and connection rate as before. And I created a new user also (that’s another story involving my Flash app that wouldn’t lauch). Creating a new user fixed that problem, but was a huge hassle transferring mail and prefs over. Still, the Wifi connection reliability seems lacking even with the new user….
Not that this helps your situation, but after Panther, I decided not to be an early adopter, but to wait to see how the situation pans out for those willing to install a new OS. I rely on my Powerbook for all my personal information storage as well as my consulting business, and I set up a considerable number of custom settings. Something about the way I used fonts in Jaguar made the Panther upgrade get hosed, and it took me a day to figure it out. Since then, I grew to love Panther.
I installed Tiger over Panther on a new iBook for a friend yesterday, and it went perfectly. However, I am not about to risk my main system until 10.4.1 is out. Even though the majority of upgraders are having no trouble, it’s not worth the risk to me. I have a system that works great.
That being said, as Gary recommended, create a new user (”test”) and log in to that account, and that will narrow down whether this is a user/pref problem or a system problem.
It’s frustrating when something doesn’t work correctly, especially when you expect it to go smoothly. I see in lots of these posts references to third-party hardware or software. It’s unreasonable to expect those things to upgrade perfectly. Also, it seems that most of the people with problems have fairly complex systems and are techie enough to have made personalizations that may have changed your systems from a “default” condition.
Apple’s support site has pages of instructions and tips, some of which have been suggested here already, on how to make the transition smoothly. We should all take a minute to read them before plunging into the upgrade.
http://www.apple.com/support/tiger/install/
Ah ha!!! After doing all of the suggestions above, it indeed does seem to be a user/pref issue. Logging in under a new test account… it’s right where it should be.
Now what? What do I do to fix those prefs on the master account?
Try turning off DHCP on your router. I’ve noticed that Tiger may have an issue with DHCP services. My fix has been to use Static IP addressing and since then - has worked rock solid. Not sure what’s going wrong but I do hope that Apple issues a fix soon.
Good luck!
try to delete the entry for your wireless account from the keychain. Then, when prompted to save it the next time, say yes.
Try these things, Mike:
? Reset the Mac’s PRAM/NVRAM/Open Firmware.
? Power off your router, then power it back on.
? If you haven’t assigned a password to your router, give it one. Without a password in some routers, the Airport software may not be able to automatically connect to it.
? Re-enter the AirPort network password in System Preferences> Network> Airport> Configure; click the “Assist me” button to launch the Network Setup Assistant (which is at System/Library/CoreServices), which will step you through the process of creating a new Airport configuration, and will ask for the network password.
? Delete the network password from the keychain (using the Keychain Access utility at Applications/Utilities) and reenter it (or change the network password to a new one). If there are even minor problems with the keychain, Airport sometimes just gives up and doesn’t join the network when it wakes up.
? If you’ve set Airport to join a specific network, change this setting to “Automatic”. However, some people find they need to do the opposite.
? Delete the file at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist. This file contains information pertaining to Energy Saver and Sleep settings.
? Delete the files at /var/db/NetworkInterfaces.xml, and /var/db/SystemConfiguration/*.xml.
? Clean out the system’s caches with a utility like Jaguar Cache Cleaner or Cocktail.
I did an upgrade and everything went smoothly. Three problems I noticed later. I was unable to print to a HP OfficeJet 6110 Xi. I uninstalled the HP and reinstalled it. Still no joy. 2nd issue: My WiFi seems weaker. My wife sitting next to me at home, she’s using my old G4, has 4 bars on the fan and I only have 2 now. I asked at the Apple store and they, of course, never heard of my problems. 3rd issue: my sync softward PocketMac doesn’t work. Their website says they will have updated drivers within two weeks, so that is a known issue.
My concern is the printer. I click “print” and it will appear to start and in 2 or 3 seconds it will say “jobs stopped”. And that’s it.
can you give me more info on what your isync problem was and how you resolved it… mine keeps telling me hotsync manager isn’t installed.
IN DIRE NEED OF HELP!
My Father has a wireless Windows-based network, using an HP Laserjet 2200D printer over a D-Link DP-311U.
My father brought a Mac Mini with Panther OS X.3 installed and it worked automatically with the network. Yesterday, he installed Tiger to his machine, and suddenly the printer won’t print.
Getting same message as Peter Dunev, “job stopped”.
Following advise from someone, I deleted the printer and rebooted machine. It is finding the machine as AppleTalk. Still would not print.
My father has 512 meg RAM and has both Airport Extreme and Bluetooth installed on machine.
Went into Windows and got IP address and info. Please help me get him up and running.
Thanx