Mac OS X 10.3.5 (#7): FireWire gone; fan/sleep issues; unrecognized RAM; more

Today we continue our coverage of reported issues with the OS X 10.3.5 Update. (Watch for an update later today dealing with the many reports of printing-related issues.)

FireWire problems We've now had a couple reports of FireWire problems under Mac OS X 10.3.5. Reader "Mugge" writes:

"After upgrading, my two pocket Firewire, FireLite (SmartDisk) [hard drives] have a problem. On my work machine, i have 10.2.8 OS X running smooth, and my home PB 17" 1.33 10.3.5, when using the FireLite disk on both systems, now I always have hard drive failure if i want to transport something from work to home; I never had that before. If I format the drive under 10.2.8, the disk is slow under 10.3.5, if I format under 10.3.5, my 10.2.8 system won't reconise the drive at all. Weird"

Reader Andrew Shalat reports similar issues with FireWire and 10.3.5; however repairing permissions appears to have fixed things for him:

"At first I thought it a coincidence that after updating to 10.3.5, my onboard FireWire was lost; dead; nonexistent. Problem was fixed by running disk utility...and then repairing permissions. Still at a loss as to what the relationship was, but FireWire is back online."

Fan/sleep issues We've been covering a significant number of reader reports of fans that won't turn off when the Mac is asleep after applying the 10.3.5 update. As we previously noted, nearly all reports of this problem come from owners of single-processor 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 models. Although we included an Apple Knowledge Base article on this problem in our daily updates last week, we didn't cover it explicitly: Apple has confirmed the problem with sleep and OS X 10.3.5 on single-processor 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 models. That Knowledge Base article notes:

After installing the Mac OS X 10.3.5 Update, a Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz single processor (SP) computer's fans can continue to run in sleep mode.

When the computer goes to sleep with Mac OS X 10.3.5 installed, these things happen: The display goes dark, internal Apple disks spin down, internal third-party disks may spin down, internal fans continue to run.

Changing Energy Saver settings or resetting PRAM does not affect the fans.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't provide a solution, stating only "This document will be updated as more information becomes available." As we noted on Tuesday, the only sure-fire solution is to revert to OS X 10.3.4 until Apple fixes the problem.

Affecting other Macs? We recently received the first report of this problem with other Mac models. Reader Thomas Frogh writes:

"I have a G4-867 Quicksilver with 1.5GB of RAM, ATI 8500 AGP Card and Rage Orion PCI video card. Since upgrading to 10.3.5 via the stand alone combo updater my machine sleeps, but the fans stay running. This glitch is affecting most of the machines in my office that I updated this past weekend. 2 of my 3 G5?s have their fans running on low while asleep. Both QS-867 machines hum loudly (as the QS always have). Only 1 G4-450DP Gigabit was left on tonight for me to check and its fans were on. Strangely, my G4-400SP Gigabit went to silent sleep. None of the machines with the fan problem are actually going into deep sleep. Their power buttons never pulse. Before the update, I repaired the permissions on all of the machines. After the update, I repaired again, and using OnyX I deleted all of the caches and logs as a standard maintenance routine."

Unrecognized RAM Yesterday we noted that some readers are having trouble with RAM intermittently not being recognized after installing the 10.3.5 Update. A number of readers have since confirmed that they're also experiencing such issues; for example, Luke Masson writes:

"In my G4 17" PowerBook, which has a 1GB and a 512 MB RAM chip, after 10.3.5 installation, the 512 was not recognized. I swapped the chips around and it was recognized again."

Similarly, Bob Petrucci reports:

"I just tried to add some non-Apple memory to my G5 running system 10.3.5, and ran into a [similar] problem: 'About this Macintosh' did not show the new memory, either after a 'cold' start or a restart. And System Profiler showed the two slots containing the new memory as 'empty.' I re-seated the DIMMs and re-started. No change. Then I ran the Hardware Test CD. The Hardware Test Profile showed both of the new DIMMs, and they passed the Extended Test. When I restarted after this, all was well; 'About this Macintosh' showed all my memory, and the profiler showed the new memory as well."

TurboTax issues Reader David Oehring reports an issue between OS X 10.3.5 and TurboTax 2003:

"After updating to Mac OS 10.3.5, I'm unable to run Turbotax Deluxe 2003. Immediately after the splash screen there is an error 'Turbotax could not start up because of an error. Some required QuickType fonts are missing from your system. Please reinstall Turbotax from your installation disks.'"

Quark Reader Ralf Zeigermann reports a conflict between OS X and QuarkXPress 6.1 that may or may not be related to 10.3.5:

"Since updating to 10.3.5, Quark 6.1 won't collect for output anymore -- it displays an 'Unknown error (1028).' Although, looking through [the MacFixIt] forum, it doesn't seem to be necessarily related to the OS X update, it could be a Quark internal thing; apparently people had the same problem before. It's just that *before* updating Quark would collect for output -- now it refuses to do so.

Audio settings changed after sleep We previously covered an issue where after installing 10.3.5, various Mac/PowerBook models have their audio output settings reset to their default values after waking from sleep. A number of readers have since confirmed this problem on their own systems. For example, Geoffrey Gioja writes:

"I too have experienced that my laptop (PowerBook 17?) reverts to internal speakers upon restart after having disconnected from the HK Soundsticks + Subwoofer. This has happened three times, requiring to go back into the Sound system preference and select Soundsticks as my output device."

However, reader Bill Hermelin notes that this issue is not isolated to OS X 10.3.5:

"When I put the G5 to sleep and wake it up, it always jumps to the internal speakers even though my optical connection is still working. I tried the archive and install method after resetting the PRAM and was able to reproduce the same problem under 10.3, so it's not just 10.3.5 that causes this issue on my G5."

SystemUIServer monopolizing processor On Monday we noted reports of an issue where the SystemUIServer process -- which is related to OS X's user interface -- takes almost 100% of the Mac's processor (or of one processor on dual-processor machines) according to Activity Monitor. However, at least one reader is experiencing this issue prior to upgrading to 10.3.5, perhaps indicating that this isn't a 10.3.5 issue, but rather a broader OS X issue. Sally Shears writes:

Some think [this problem] is 10.3.5, some think it's Airport 3.4. Well, I have the 'SystemUIServer takes all the CPU' problem on a Pismo with 10.3.4 and Airport 3.3 -- On a machine that just sits there running EvoCam to take photos with an iSight, rsync via cron to up-pload images every five minutes, and a terminal window with top. The freeze up happens every 10-20 days. Since my machine sits there creating images, I can report that the problem is progressive. For example, today, I can see that the problem began during the afternoon; at 3pm the cron job for rsync skipped 30 minutes, ran, skipped 3 hours, ran, then stopped launching. The last evocam image was taken at 8pm, and the menu-bar-clock stopped updating at 9:30. At 10:30, the terminal window showing top was still updating every three seconds (normally every 1 second). At 10:45 that, too, stopped and the machine was completely frozen. [snip] The progressive failure may account for the different symptoms (some say they can launch apps from the dock, other say they get the beach-ball, others say they can use terminal and ssh, others say its a freeze). I think it's a progressive failure that takes place over several hours... Awaiting a fix... Instead of going back to 3.2, I'm going to try going forward to 10.3.5 and Airport 3.4.1"

What's your experience with the update? Drop us an email at Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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