OSX applications crashing and slow start-up

[annadesigner]

I have very recently bought my imac G5 and have installed OSX Panther with the update 10.3.8 onto it. I am a graphic designer, have installed Adobe CS, quite a few fonts, a printer driver and MSN messenger... nothing revolutionary or dodgy.
The computer is taking almost 2 minutes to start up each time, and now, the applications Safari, Mail and any software update programs either refuse to start up or crash moments into using them.
I have reinstalled the system about 5 times in total now, and it tends to work for the first few times I use it, and then, on a restart, I'm back to this same issue of none of the OSX programmes working.
Any advice anyone can give me will be hugely appreciated.
thanks
anna

 

[devastator]

Try running "Font Finagler". It is shareware with 10 free uses.

http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. ~ Baggins

 

[Zelandakh]

What font manager are you using?

 

[annadesigner]

Started with Fontbook - started having problems so switched to Suitcase - then had major problems.... so reinstalled everything (all system software) and went back to using Fontbook.

I have installed Font Finagler following the advice of a few different people - but I don't think it's anything to do with Font caches because I simply haven't been using the machine long enough to have built anything up.

Can someone tell me how many fonts it's acceptable to keep on a machine... and is there a way of hiding fonts from Fontbook?

I really am not looking forward to having to go through every font I've got to check which ones are corrupted- cause I'm sure I have many.

anna

 

[Zelandakh]

Buy a copy of Suitcase and use that to manage them. You can successfully have thousands of fonts with that.

 

[annadesigner]

I have installed a copy of Suitcase now, and followed a guide to using fonts in OSX, and all seems to be working ok now.

thanks for your suggestions
anna
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