Answer to your first question is no.

I guess if I'm going to clone a drive - it probably would clone the problem. My next step is a complete rebuild. If that doesn't work I may have a G5 for sale.

Craig, a few more words of advice (hopefully) before you embark on your rebuild:

- After backing up all essential files, insert your OS install CD and shut down
- Disconnect any third-party USB and FireWire peripherals
- Boot-up with the OS install CD, choose your language, then launch Disk Utilit from the Utilities menu
- Re-format your drive, writing zeroes over it (Erase-tab). This is the ONLY way to get rid of bad blocks on ATA/S-ATA drives, since you can't do a software-based low-level format. The IDE will map the bad blocks out when completely re-writing the disk, which is what writing zeroes does. If you want a partition scheme with more than one partition, you need to use the Erase function first (w/ zeroes). Once complete, you can re-partition as needed in the Partition-tab.
- Once done, re-boot and do all the resets (P-RAM, Open Firmware, PMU) as mentioned before. After this, there's absolutely nothing left on your machine from the previous installation.
- Then install the OS

Good luck!

HTH,

Ron

You really should have a drive large enough to do a full backup. Obviously, cloning the drive will copy any problem files but the point is that you would have a full backup of everything that could be used to extract anything you needed. Others are telling you basically the same thing however, you need to completely erase the internal drive and re-install everything "clean."

Craig, any news on your battle front?

The nightmare is over
 

Thanks everyone for your help.

Just when I was about to hang myself with a disk reformat and rebuild a member on another forum recommended I CREATE A NEW USER ACCOUNT (w/admin privilages of course). Final Cut launched first try under the new account. I'm stupefied.

A clear sign of a corrupt preference file (these are all user-based). If you can't find the culprit, the only way around it is a clean-install...

HTH,

Ron

Craig: since you couldn't get rid of the problem in the original user account, you may not have deleted all the FCP-prefs. You may want to try again, deleting the following files in ~/Library/Preferences in your old user account: com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist and the folder 'Final Cut Pro User Data'. Warning: deleting the latter also rids you of all your custom settings you may have created!

You were right - there must have been a preference file that I neglected to delete... even though I would swear to it that I deleted every one that had Final Cut or Final Cut Studio in it... multiple times! I can't explain it.

This little program kills all Final Cut 5 prefs with one click.

http://pistolerapost2.com/fcprescue/

FC is now running in my original user account.