[X4U] Combination software problem

[David Candler]

Hi.  I'm a fairly new user of Macs and OSX.  I'm running a PowerMac  
G4 AGP Graphics with 10.4.8 and it's been trouble free since I bought  
it last October.  Yesterday when I attempted to play a DVD, DVD  
Player complained about an "Initialization Error error: nilP"   
Thinking that perhaps some settings had gotten messed up somehow, I  
dragged that Settings folder from ~/Library/Application Support/DVD  
Player to the trash, but that was unsuccessful.  I shut down and  
restarted the machine which didn't help either.  In fact my problems  
compounded because when I wanted to go online to research this  
problem on Google, Safari would start but not display a window.  I  
could only access its menu bar and clicking File-New Window would not  
bring up a window either.  Then I noticed that Mail.app had some  
strangeness.  The main mailboxes (Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash) were  
now named INBOX_SPECIAL_MAILBOX_NAME, etc and instead of RE: in  
replies in the message list I now have REPLY_SUBJECT_PREFIX.   
Otherwise mail is working fine, and Firefox is working in place of  
Safari.  I'm in the process of downloading VLC, which I expect would  
work fine in place of DVD Player.

I recently removed the original DVD-ROM drive and installed a Pioneer  
DVR-111D burner.  I installed MacTheRipper, DVD2One and Burn to do  
some ripping and burning.  DVD Player was working for a couple of  
days after all that, though.  In my research on Google, I came across  
few examples of the DVD player problem and what I did find seemed to  
indicate that Shapeshifter can be a cause of some of these problems.   
I hadn't used it in a while anyway, so I deleted what I could find of  
it.  That didn't seem to help me, though.  I also ran the 'Fix  
Permissions' in Disk Utility.  No joy.

I'm hoping some of you helpful people can point me in the right  
direction.  I have 10 years of experience with Linux (just home  
desktop use, though) before this so I don't mind digging into config  
files.  By the way, this machine didn't come with the 10.4 disks but  
I'm thinking this is a good time to get them.  Thanks in advance for  
your help!


==============================
David Candler     dcandler at sasktel.net
      Chaplin, Saskatchewan Canada
==============================