WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg, ClockWise

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TiddK
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WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

Post by TiddK »

I'd forgotten this.. About 10 years ago, when I started to use OS X full time, I saw warnings not to use Norton Utilities as it would mess with OS X in various dangerous ways.

Yesterday, in SS, purely out of curiosity, I ran NU (I had a copy from pre-osx days). Then I switched to Mail, but had to Force Quit it as it was unresponsive. Same with Safari. Preview. iPhoto. Pathfinder. Basilisk. TextEdit. Finder. Everything in fact. I had to power off the computer. Restarting it was a total nightmare. It took 20 minutes and several attempts.

So... if you run SS and you have a copy of NU - DON'T RUN IT!!!!! You have been warned..

(PS - this only applies to the NU suite itself; I've used Norton Encrypt and it seems ok.)
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The warning at the time was because then MacOS was running side-by-side with MacOSX. Files of both were on the same HD.

I do not know what happened in your setup, but if NU indeed affected OSX while running in SheepShaver, as far as I can imagine it could only have happened through the shared folder (Unix volume).

Which folder do you have assigned as shared folder? Our setup guide warns agains keeping the default setting "/" (which means all of your hard diks) as shared folder. It is best to create a separate folder in OSX that is only used for that purpose. Nothing in the emulated machine can reach past that shared folder.

BTW: If you are running OSX 10.11 (El Capitan) with SIP enabled, no process could have affected the thus protected System files.
TiddK
Granny Smith
Posts: 106
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2016 12:25 pm

Re: WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

Post by TiddK »

Hi Ronald, thanks for replying.

I have a Shared folder in my Home folder which is also the Unix. I actually ran NU against the Mac86 virtual disk which is in the SS folder - NU is on that same disk.

This is weird then. I've never had to Force Quit all my OS X apps before, and though I've occasionally had to power off the machine (hard reset), it's always managed to repair itself and get me back within less than 5 minutes.

And this all occurred immediately after using NU in SS. If it's a coincidence, then it's a very strange one that I can't otherwise explain.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Very strange indeed and I have no explanation either. Also, you will not be the first to use NU on a volume in SheepShaver.

Maybe the exercise made SheepShaver use all available CPU time, or it used memory in a way that blocked other processes. If anything like this happens again, it may be useful to try if Activity Monitor can be launched to see which process brings your Mac to its knees.

BTW 1: I occasionally need to force quit an application that stopped responding, but I hardly ever shut down my iMac and I only restart when needed for an update. I don't remember when I last needed to hard shut down my Mac.

BTW 2: I do not want to scare you, but if something like what you described happened to me, I would check to see if there could be serious file system corruption or even hardware failure.
TiddK
Granny Smith
Posts: 106
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2016 12:25 pm

Re: WARNING: Norton Utilities and Sheepshaver

Post by TiddK »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote: BTW 1: I occasionally need to force quit an application that stopped responding, but I hardly ever shut down my iMac and I only restart when needed for an update. I don't remember when I last needed to hard shut down my Mac.

BTW 2: I do not want to scare you, but if something like what you described happened to me, I would check to see if there could be serious file system corruption or even hardware failure.
I know on the few occasions I've hard shut down my Mac, it's been a dodgy software issue - for example, the Bluetooth headset sometimes caused a problem. But only very rarely, I usually keep my Mac running with overnight Sleep, for a few weeks at a time.

However, as I migrated all my users AND settings from my G5 iMac originally in 2011, it is entirely possible that a 'dodgy' setting came across too.

I wouldn't have been able to launch Activity Monitor, as everything needed a Force Quit. Today, SS is fine, running as well as it did before. I will stay away from NU though.
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