Office upgrades cause my OS to shut down

[shara.lunison]

I'm running Mac OSX 10.4 on an iBook G4. Earlier this year I wiped my
harddrive and reinstalled everything, and since then my OS
occasionally pulls up a black screen telling me that I have to restart
my computer. I thought maybe it was something to do with wiping the
HD, but now I notice that every time I update my computer, and I'm
pretty sure only when I update Microsoft Office, the OS will restart
two or three times before things beging running normally again.

I want to know if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this
problem, or even if I'm completely wrong about what's causing it. I
suppose I could just stop updating Office, but that seems kind of
silly.

Thanks!

 

[William Smith]

I'm running Mac OSX 10.4 on an iBook G4. Earlier this year I wiped my
harddrive and reinstalled everything, and since then my OS
occasionally pulls up a black screen telling me that I have to restart
my computer. I thought maybe it was something to do with wiping the
HD, but now I notice that every time I update my computer, and I'm
pretty sure only when I update Microsoft Office, the OS will restart
two or three times before things beging running normally again.

I want to know if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this
problem, or even if I'm completely wrong about what's causing it. I
suppose I could just stop updating Office, but that seems kind of
silly.

You're describing what's called a kernel panic. It's a gray screen with
multiple languages telling you to restart, correct?

Kernel panics can be caused by a problem with your Mac OS X operating
system or by failing hardware.

Your iBook came with an installer disk and it or another disk contains a
hardware diagnosis utility. Boot your iBook with this disk and see if it
finds any hardware problems.

If you purchased Apple Care then your package probably contained a CD
with TechTool Pro. It can also help diagnose hardware problems.

If your hardware is fine then you may want to reinstall your Mac OS
using Archive & Install.

I personally know of no issues with Office causing kernel panics.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[CyberTaz]

In addition to Bill's comments see the in-line below:

I'm running Mac OSX 10.4 on an iBook G4. Earlier this year I wiped my
harddrive and reinstalled everything,

Did you do this because of some specific symptoms or just because you had
nothing better to do one rainy Sunday? Details?

OS X 10.4.what? When you reinstalled everything did you also *re-update*
everything? Reinstalling effectively sends you back in time & if all updates
don't get reapplied - in the correct order - you might experience this type
of behavior.

and since then my OS
occasionally pulls up a black screen telling me that I have to restart
my computer. I thought maybe it was something to do with wiping the
HD, but now I notice that every time I update my computer, and I'm
pretty sure only when I update Microsoft Office, the OS will restart
two or three times before things beging running normally again.

If you mean that the Mac is automatically rebooting itself every when you
start up this can be a symptom of what was referred to above.

I want to know if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this
problem, or even if I'm completely wrong about what's causing it. I
suppose I could just stop updating Office, but that seems kind of
silly.

Like Bill wrote, it is a virtual certainty that Office is not at fault here.
It may appear to be since it sounds like you've applied Office updates which
are dependent on OS X updates & that those are not being found. So, again,
updating OS X completely & correctly along with the other diagnostics Bill
suggested should correct the problem.

Thanks!

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac