Well here we go, My nice hand me down G4 Digital Audio 10.4.5 with AOL, and there are times when certain times the pointer turns to that spinning little color wheel and I can not resume the AOL. I can however open other browsers, but the AOL freezes. Any idea how to release the spinning wheel from the AOL?
You might also want to do the latest security update if you haven't done that.
[Security Update 2009-005 (Tiger PPC)|http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL931/en_US/SecUpd2009-005PPC.dmg]
General notes on
Updating
Certain steps appear to minimize the risk of an update producing problems.
Number one is to make sure you have a clone backup of your computer in case you do need to back out of it again. This is the only guaranteed way of not having to worry about the results of an update.
Some like to boot from their installer discs or an external backup and verify (and if necessary repair) their internal drives as well as drive permissions. This is done with Disk Utility. You can verify a drive while booted from the same drive but sometimes this produces spurious errors. Repairing a drive (if necessary) has to be done while booted from another disk. Permissions repair can, and is probably best, done when booted from your internal drive.
[Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214]
[Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672]
[Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751]
You can also go to the step of booting into safe mode to do the install.
[Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393]
[What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X)|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392]
[Safe Boot takes longer than normal startup|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107394]
I like to download the update onto my computer and install it from there rather than let Software Update do it. I know a few people who had problems with doing the update via software updater found a manual install to work.
Repair permissions again afterward.
It helps to only install one update at a time and to run the computer for a while to make sure it is behaving well.
The more cautious even like to unplug third party peripherals (see [comment by BDaqua|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9040746#9040746]).
Almost all of the above steps (except backup) have been questioned as to necessity because probably many people have done successful updates without doing them. I say they can't hurt, they can very likely do good (especially if your computer isn't regularly maintained), so why not do them to be safe.
[BDaqua's comments on updating problems|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8948595#8948595]
[Baby Boomer's comments on updating problems|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9025760#9025760]
After doing all that, are you running a recent version of AOL? I see from its web site that there are multiple components to it. If it were me I guess a question to ask would be is there a reason to run it at all?
Java Applets &
AOL For OS X do not get along.
Any Web site you happen upon with an applet, will freeze the
AOL program, necessitating a force quit.
The solution is to disable
Javascript.
Open
AOL Preferences > WWW > Content: Under
Active ContentuncheckEnable Javascript.
And use
Safari for sites you must visit that have
Java Applets. I seldom use the
AOL browser anymore.
Of course
Java Applets won't load if you do use the
AOL browser, but you won't be freezing, necessitating a force quit every time you inadvertently load a page with one.
