My wife has CS4 as well and was having problems with oneonone plug in crashing. Check the memory allocation. Also suggest running repair permissions and reboot. See if that helps. I do understand that it is on both computers so the idea of a corrupt file may be the issue. Before you call Adobe for help I would do some house keeping on your Mac as they will ultimately suggest you do that.
Updated everything
Tried creating a new user and running Illustrator
Trashed all Illustrator preferences
Turned off all fonts on the system and deleted the AdobeFntlst files - deleted any fonts that had issues from FontBook
Moved the ICC profiles
Removed 3rd party plugins
Repaired permissions
Changed default printer to different printers
Reinstalled Illustrator
Still does the same thing. I can save a simple file that has let say a box and some text - but as soon as I add anything like an image jpg, it will not save, and crash.
I ended up having to completely wipe both systems, reinstall the OS, and reinstall CS4 suite - that seemed to work for a few days - but now as of this morning I am having the same issue again with an entirely different set of files.
Plugins that I have installed are from Rick Johnson / Graffix:
Concatenate
Arrowheads
Select Menu
I had these plugins installed for months before having the issue so I'm pretty sure its not that.
So at this point I am back to the beginning, but I can hardly keep reinstalling everything since that is about a half day process to restore the system. - and I do not have time machine setup which I'm not sure would help me in this case.
Do use TimeMachine for data;
SuperDuper for imaging the system;
Clone the system at least twice: known good backup image and for testing.
Clone or image can be just a sparse image created with Disk Utility.
I would also keep user accounts separate from the system and on 2nd drive.
Rather than reinstall, use alternate systems. You may even need to do what others have learned to, one system for specific task or configuration.
Use different user accounts.
Don't rule out plist or preference settings or corruption.
Normally I use Disk Warrior to keep a system maintained but TechTool Pro (5.01) will do more to check files for integrity and errors, and useful addition.
If I was building a sytem today, I'd probably use 10K WD VelociRaptor or two for system, some scratch drives in stripped RAID for editing and saving work, and then media drive(s). With 3 backup sets of work.
Apple now sells OS X 10.5.6 on DVD, replacing the 10.5.4 (and 10.5.0, shame there is no upgrade program) so they must feel 10.5.6 is gold. Not all software and hardware though does, but Sonnet just posted updates for their SATA Tempo card drivers. When it comes to production, newest and latest is not usually best.
Update - I started moving preference files from my user out of the library and once I removed the following preference Illustrator started working again:
com.adobe.CSXSPreferences.plist
This may connect why both illustrator CS3 and CS4 would both act the same way - they must be both using this file?
The issue causing it on my end seems to possibly server related. At the time Illustrator crashes, I am attempting to save across the network to a NAS drive (gigabit connection). This error may have corrupted both machines. At this point I will be working with an IT person to see what issues may have caused this. If I find anything else I will post again.
Up until this point we have not had any issues. But the major issue is recently, when saving across the network to our NAS drive, it corrupts the preference file mentioned above. We ran two systems for a few months with no issues until this. I have no idea if it is a recent Mac OS update and Illustrator conflict or what
