The application <application> has unexpectedly quit due to an error of Type 1 (or 2,10 or 11)


What it means

The first (and potentially the most important) thing to note with regards to this error is that unless it's happening repeatedly while attempting the same operation (i.e. "I double click on Netscape and it gives me this error message immediatly"), it may not mean anything. This error has been known to pop up for no observable reason every now and then-- when you buy a Mac, it's to be expected. If it IS appearing repeatedly, and (very important) the application causing this error is Netscape or the FreePPP Setup, chances are it's one of two things. Either the preferences file associated with the crashing program is corrupt, or it's a memory error f some sort. It is conceivable that if the FreePPP Setup is causing the error that the MacTCP of TCP/IP preferences file is corrupt. Unlikely, but possible.

Deleting and re-creating the FreePPP preferences.

Deleting and re-creating the Netscape preferences.

Deleting and re-creating the MacTCP preferences.

Deleting and re-creating the TCP/IP preferences.

These fixes (the last two of which are rarely used) solve the problem in the vast majority of cases (Not as often for Type 11 errors). If the problem persists, proceed to the next section.

If the application causing this is not one of ours, then contacting Apple Tech Support (1.800.SOS.APPL) is the next step. If their Mac won't even boot, you can pretty much bet that the System software is going to need to be re-installed. DO NOT DO THIS! This is not our job, and can potentially get us into a lot of trouble.

Procedure



Another possibility is that there is a memory allocation or shortage problem. First, determine how much memory is installed:

  1. Make sure the icon the far upper right-hand corner of the screen (up by the clock) looks like this: . If it doesn't, click on whatever icon is next to the and choose "Finder" from the list.
  2. Go up to the menu and choose "About this Macintosh..." You will see something similar to this:

The "Total Memory" setting is how much RAM the computer has available. The "Built-in Memory setting (if present) is how much physical RAM is installed in the computer, and is an indication that a memory manager (RAM Doubler or Virtual Memory) is being used. "Largest unused block" is the amount of free memory (this is important). If the Built-in Memory is less that 8 Megabytes, the customer will experience problems if a memory manager is not in use. Generally, I recommend Virtual Memory instead which, while slower, is more reliable.

If there is 16 Megabytes or more of real memory, you can increase the amount of memory that a given application is using.

  1. Make note of which program is generating the error. If the error is "The application "unknown" has unexpectedly quit...", find out which program was in use at the time. It's a fair bet that that's the culprit. (It's usually Netscape, or "unknown" while Netscape is in use).
  2. Go up to the icon in the far upper right-hand corner of the screen. have the customer click once and hold the mouse button down and read off what's in there. If any of the Erol's software is listed there (Netscape, FreePPP Setup), select it, then go to "File" and choose "Quit". The change that is being made in this section can not be made at all if the program in question is running.

  3. Double-click on the Erol's Internet folder

  4. Click one time only on the icon for the program in question (for example, the Netscape program icon, then go up to "File" and choose "Get Info..." You'll see something similar to this:

    The "Suggested" setting is how much memory the program would like to have available to it, the "Minimum" settng" is the lowest amount of memory the program will run in, if that's all that's available at the time, and the "Preferred" setting is the amount of memory the program will take if it's available. In the above example (Netscape 3.01), you can see that Netscape requires a minimum of 7 megabytes to run. Netscape 2.02 requires a little under 4 megabytes. You can increase the "Minimum" and "Preferred" settings in an effort to combat the error messages. The trick is to set the "Minimum" setting to that its new value should be no more that 1 megabyte less than the "largest unused block".

    Example

    A customer calls in stating that she is recieving an error message which states "The application 'Netscape 2.02' has unexpectedly quit due to an error of type 1" Having already tried removing and recreating the Netscape Preferences file, you decide the next course of action is to adjust the memory settings.

    You have the customer close all programs and go up to the menu and choose "About this Macintosh..." There's nothing complicated in there... you can see that no memory managers are running because there is no "Built-in Memory" setting. The "Total Memory" is 16384 (16 Megs), and the largest unused block is 10151 which is more than enough to to play with the memory settings and have some memory leftover.

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