Why does Netscape 7.2 for Mac crash when I search in bookmark manager?

I have tried Safari, it stinks!  that program closes more randomly than Netscape.

Netscape is basically mozilla isn't it?

how could netscape for os x be dead?? they just barely released the newest version 7.2

I haven't had Safari quit on me in months. It's a great browser. If safari is quitting that often it's an indication that something is very wrong with your system. Run DiskWarrior and Cocktail on it to clean out weirdness. If Safari still quite, make sure youre running the most current version and if that doesn't fix it you have system problems that are not fixable with the current install.

Netscape is not Mozilla. Mozilla is a much more up to date open source and compliant offshoot. At this point the two have almost nothing in common. Netscape's development team is more or less inactive.

I just downloaded mozilla and ran it, and it looks exactly the same as netscape.  the preferences window is exactly the same and has all the same options.  They are very similar.

My system runs fine.  Safari has never worked right.  i tried using it when my powerbook was brand new, and it didn't work right then, so I downloaded netscape.

The way it looks has little bearing on how it works. The underlying rendering engine in Mozilla/Firebird is VERY VERY different. The "skin" means nothing.

Safari runs well enough that most OS X users are using it. If it's not working for you, something is wrong with your system.

ok, this is all good information, but do you have any idea why netscape is crashing like it is?

Netscape was never really very stable so it's not surprising that it's crashing alot. It crashes alot for everyone. The fact that Safari is also crashing indicates that besides the usual Netscape instability, there is something wrong your system and it needs a run of DiskWarrior and Cocktail. If that doesn't clear up some of the crashes, just like safari, you have problems with your system that cannot be fixed on your current install.

ok, I can accept that.  But what kind of problem on my system would cause this?  none of my other programs act that way.  And mozilla hasn't closed at all since I installed it earlier.  I can search in bookmarks and everything that made netscape close.

oops! I spoke too soon, Mozilla just crashed exactly like Netscape does.  When i search in the bookmarks manager and press 'enter', then it gives me the beachball and crashes.  It seems to work ok when I don't press enter though.  What a crumby bug!

I doubt that's a Mozilla bug. I haven't had either Mozilla or Safari quit on me in months. They're both very stable. Not doing regular system maintenance can lead to these sorts of problems. Weird cache files, odd permissions, etc etc can cause these sorts of problems. Clean them up with DiskWarrior and Cocktail.

I have diskwarrior, but what is cocktail?

Cocktail is a system maintenance tool. You can get it from versiontracker.com. Run the Pilot section.

ok, I'll back up my hard drive and run those tools.

No reason to back up your HD. Theyre just maintenance tools.

when you say to use diskwarrior, do you mean to have it rebuild the directory by running it from the cd?

Yes.

It sounds more like a hardware problem than anything else, most probably a RAM problem.
It is unlikely that cocktail or disk warrior will detect or correct the problem.
The PowerBook came with a diagnostic tools CD, I suggest you run it.

Not sure what that conjecture is based on but you might as well try fixing it with DW or Cocktail first. I suspect repairing permissions, clearing cache, cron scripts etc will clear it up.

> Not sure what that conjecture is based on but you might as well try fixing it with DW or Cocktail first.

The conjecture comes from 2 decades' worth of experience.
Running Disk Warrior on a system with bad RAM can very well corrupt
the disk beyond repair.   Check the system logs for telling errors first.  
Check the RAM next.  Then check the disk.

Seems like a premature jump...Software first, hardware second.

hmmm my day is getting more interesting by the minute...

now my windows XPiece of junk machine is smiling down on me with the BSOD and boot failures....

uggghh, I'm going to live in the woods like "The Village"

I'm trying to get an external usb 2.0 hdd to work and it won't of course.

I have had horrible luck with losing entire drives of data, so before I do anything, I want to get a fresh backup.

I have a maxtor 230 GB ATA drive in an external case connected with usb 2.0

when I try to initialize (erase) the drive with disk utility, I get an error.

this is from the DiskUtility.log:

**********
Oct  9 21:40:52: Disk Utility started.

Preparing to erase :  Untitled
Creating Partition Map
Erase complete.

Verifying volume “disk1s3”
Volume check failed.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

Disk Utility stopped verifying “disk1s3” because the following error was encountered:

The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 volume checked
      0 HFS volumes verified
      1 volume failed verification
*********

any ideas on how I can get this drive to initialize on my mac?
(this exact drive in the exact same case with the exact same usb cable works perfectly on my windows computer)

you guys know a lot more about these machines than I do, thanks for the help

also, when I format the drive as a single NTFS partition and then pull the plug from the XP machine and plug it right into the mac, it shows up in the Finder with no problem, but as soon as I try using disk utility on it, everything goes kaput.

this is becoming a nightmare (stupid maxtor drive!!) so I'm increasing the points.

also, as an aside question, how do you guys (particularly Weed) always jump on my questions so quick?  is there a trick to monitoring the newly posted questions?

You cant run a mac diagnostic utility on a PC disk. It's a totally different filesystem. Reformat it as HFS+ then run the disk util.

Just luck i suppose..I check the EE topic areas once in the morning, and once at night. If I have nothing else to do during the day I'll check them once or twice during the day.

I wasn't trying to run the mac diagnostic on a pc disk..

let me explain.

I wanted to see if there was something physically wrong with the drive or the external case... so I plugged it into my pc and formatted it, everything worked fine.

so I take it back to the mac, try to erase/format it again, got the same old error I posted above from the DiskUtility.log file.

the drive works fine on my pc, but I'm out of ideas why it won't work on the mac.  It is within the mulit-terabyte limit.

any ideas what would make it not work on the mac when it works fine with the pc?

maybe my system is just falling apart. :-)

This is really a separate question from the bookmark issue. We cant get too far off on a tangent here. Post it in another question so we can keep these issues separated.

ok, I'll close this one and open a new one.