"About this Mac" crashes Finder / Can I install Software Updates?

[solipsism]

Greetings. My install went smoothly but I am having 2 issues and have one question:

 

ISSUE: "About this Mac" crashes Finder

Everytime I open About this Mac the Finder crashes. The OSx86 Project wiki told me to check these forums for a resolution but I can't find a solution when doing a search.

 

 

ISSUE: Must boot with Install DVD in drive

This really isn't a big deal, but I'd like to get it resolved if possible. Without the Install DVD in the optical drive the active partition will not boot. I get a single, blinking cursor in the upper-right corner. I'm guessing that there was an error with the MBR, but I really don't know.

 

 

QUESTION: Can I install Software Updates?

It's not a requirement that I do upgrade my default 10.4.8 system but I'm under the impression that there will be some issues with upgrading to 10.4.9. Is that true? How about upgrade apps like iTunes and the like? Any known issues with upgrading?

 

 

System Specs:

10.4.8

Dell Optiplex GX270

P4 3.20GHz SSE3

(Hyperthreading ON)

512MB 533MHz DDR RAM (2x256)

320GB HDD

on-board NIC (working)

on-board Audio (working)

 

 

Thanks for your help.

[Zizou]

You can fix the about this mac crash by using an old or patched loginwindow, there are fixes on this forum search better.

 

I have no idea for the optical drive thing, is your partition active ?

 

No, you can not, and will never be able to use those big system upgrades through the Apple updater. There are enough guides on this forum where you'll be guided through the manual updating thing. Or download a 'pathced' version of it on the piratebay for instance.

[solipsism]

I've been attmepting to tackle to my first issue of the Finder crashing when selecting "About this Mac."

 

I've downloaded an OSx86 version of 10.4.4 to extract the loginwindow.app but I'm uable to locate it. I did find a file simply named loginwindow under /Mac OS Install Disc x86/Maxxuss_Path_Solution_v1.0/Decrypted_Files/decrypted/loginwindow. This file is only 380k compared to my ~1MB file for my current loginwindow.app.

 

This is the only such file so I'm figuring that it is compressed. Is this solution well documented on these boards?

[solipsism]

UPDATE....

 

Found the 10.4.4 loginwindow.app in the download for the "10.4.9 Combo Update (For Intel with SSE3 ONLY)" torrent. That fixed that problem after restarting twice.

 

The 10.4.9 update caused networking problems with Apple Remote Desktop and Windows Sharing. System Preferences would feeze when rying to activate. I then found another torrent titled "OSx86 10.4.9 MPIP103, SMB-CIFS-APF fix". That fixed that problem nicely. It has failed a coupled times after my machine was running couple days with no problems, but a quick reinstall fixes it again.