[bishopazrael]

OK so here's the situation.

Leopard 10.5.2 on a Macbook. Clean install of Leopard 2 months ago. I sync with a Nokia 6133 from TMobile and my 8gb ipod touch.

Last month my address book took on a life of it's own. I had 58 contact cards, and one day out of the blue it multiplied to like 400 and change. So I go in and delete by hand all the dupes. So as I'm sitting there, right in front of my eyes it respawns like a demon from hell. I did no syncing, hit no buttons, my phone's bluetooth was turned off. So I do it again, remove all the dupes. I quit address book. Open it back up and presto chango!

So I called apple last month and we went into my home folder>Library>application support and remove the address book folder. I had a good export of my address book, and the address book is empty so I import my addresses. All is fine and dandy.

Until today. Same deal I was putting in a contact and I saw my contacts list jump and multiply again! So I called apple today and I wound up talking to a product specialist. We did the same thing, remove the folder reimport the address book back up and call it good. So the product specialst... and here's where I need your guy's expertise... he says that I need to take my Macbook into my local apple store so they can run some hardware tests. I agree to do it and hang up.

So now that I'm thinking about it.... could it REALLY be hardware causing my address book to multiply? I was specific in my question to him when he said that. I asked if it could be hardware and he said yes. I saw a discussion about this very thing on apple's support page but no answers were there. Other people are having their address book multiply.

So I'm scheduled to go to the apple store tomorrow for a hardware test... but do I need to do that? Any ideas as to what's going on?

[BoingoBongo]

It might not be hardware, but it was probably too complex for him to help you with over the phone. Whether it's hardware or software, I'm sure they'll be able to help you at the Apple Store. That's a really weird problem.

[chris v]

Are you syncing with another mac using the .mac service? I've had all kinds of hell with that multiplying entries, and adding numbers from one into another, merging two into a third, all kinds of weirdness. I've had to completely re-set all my .mac info about 5 times, and finally resorted to creating new user accounts on my machines before it stopped.

[bishopazrael]

Chris... yeah I didn't mention that either. I too have a dotmac account and I reset it in the prefs, then resync'ed a good copy over to dot mac. I also just opened idisk and put my backup archive in the docs folder there so I have it as a backup there as well. I've truly made sure that my address book is overwriting anything that might have been making it nuttier than squirrel poop in spring.

And yeah I got the feeling that the "product specialist" didn't have the first clue and just wanted to get me off the phone. I was thinking about getting the Applecare just to have the phone support if needed, but this has kind of put me off. I'm calling them because they're supposed to know how to fix it and both times I called I just got the feeling that since the was so far off their scripts to fix a problem that no one knew what to do.

[bishopazrael]

Can anyone at least venture a guess so I don't waste a trip to the store? If it's not HARDWARE specifically then I don't care I can just wipe and reload to my heart's content.

[bishopazrael]

Ok now I'm scared. Just happened in ical too. Deleted a calendar that I don't need anymore and ...BOOM! 4 minutes later it's back. OK what is going on? Do I need to sacrifice a goat here or something?