Mountain Lion Unstable?

I see that I have created a misunderstanding by the use of the word "migrate." I have not used Migration Assistant at all, having had bad experiences in the past. I received a new machine with Mountain Lion installed. Using Apple Update, I updated the system to 10.8.2. The single user account was newly established. Then, I installed only newly acquired, current versions of software and, then, moved my documents and pictures, Preferences were all newly set and libraries, such as Safari Booksmards, were imported across the Ethernet network.

Over 30+ years of Apple ownership, I have always paused in a stable environment of system and hardware until forced by some outside influence to upgrade. Then, I have leapfrogged to the latest system. Generally, I have tried to wait until there were several updates to the new system. Maybe I have moved to Mountain Lion too soon??

dwb wrote:

One issue you are probably dealing with is the auto-resume function that was new to Lion and thankfully somewhat modified for Mt Lion. When you log in or boot the computer programs that were running when the computer was shut down or logged out are relaunched. Also files that were open in a program when that program was quit will re-open. This behavior can be changed by opening System Preferences, selecting the General Tab and clicking off the Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps option. Also when you log out or shut down you'll see an option in the dialog that pops up to reopen windows when logging back in. Click that off. These two actions should stop the mysterious file and app launching.

If you have a Finder window open to a device and when you eject that device the window does close. There's nothing for it to show any longer.

Are you sure Excel was quit - just because no application windows are open doesn't mean the application isn't running. One kernel panic doesn't mean trouble. One a day certainly does but not an isolated incident.

The box to click in General Prefs has now changed to "Close windows when quitting an Application" and a small explanation underneath says that, when clicked, those windows will not be restored when reopenning an app. I had it checked but am not sure when I did??

I usually keep open a Finder window in order to choose, in the left column, Documents or Applications or Pictures, etc. I expect that to remain and only the device to disappear. Else, I have to reopen the Finder window frequently. I still miss the hierarchal Apple Menu where I could install an alias of my Documents and scan across the entire Documents folder! Even back in OS 7, I had a third party app that would add that capability.

No, I am not 100% certain that Excel was not open. I certainly understand that an app can be open without windows. I frequently leave them that way and, I may have this time. Continuing to think about all this, it could be that all this strange behavior started when I installed MS Office 2011 and was dumb enough to let it Easy Install! God knows what it put on here! I may Uninstall it and do it over with just the wanted applications??

Thanks for your time and help!

Message was edited by: GeneMike

baltwo wrote:

According to another thread, Apple's no longer supporting migration from Tiger or earlier. That might be your issue.

I tried to make it clear that I never used Migration Assistant. Back when I was contemplating it, a conversation with Apple Tech Support led to the infomation that it could not be done over an Ethernet Network but the two computers had to be connected with FireWire and the old one with 10.4 in Target Disk Mode.

...clipped...Continuing to think about all this, it could be that all this strange behavior started when I installed MS Office 2011 and was dumb enough to let it Easy Install! God knows what it put on here! I may Uninstall it and do it over with just the wanted applications??...clipped

Glory be! I may have found it! When I installed MS Office 2011, I declined Automatic Updates. I don't like much happening automatically on my computer. So, now, I launched Excel and checked for updates and found myself downloading and installing two major updates. All I can say for now is that the Office apps launch and quit much more crisply!

Message was edited by: GeneMike