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megus · May 27, 2003, 04:31 PM

Hope somebody can save me from being forced to reinstall OS X...

After installing Adobe Reader I've been experiencing application crashes on launch. The applications affected are TextEdit, BBEdit and Transmit (there may well be others).

I've tried repairing permissions without luck. But for some reason emptying the System Cache (using Cocktail) allows the applications to launch once, then it's back to crashing.

I'm not sure Adobe Reader has anything to do with it. I also installed the DivX 5.0.6 beta this morning, so this may also be a possible suspect.

Any help appreciated!

//megus

tkmd · May 27, 2003, 10:15 PM

something similar happened to me but it involved any program that would try to access the internet. Turned out to be an system internet preference that somehow got corrupted. Any of these programs use something similar in the system? a font perhaps? Trash some preferences see if that helps,

bradoesch · May 27, 2003, 10:23 PM

Each time I dabble with themes this happens to me. No apps will launch, even the theming app I need to revert back to Aqua.

Rainy Day · May 27, 2003, 10:33 PM

I suspect you have a corrupted directory. I doubt you need to reinstall MacOS X.

Have you tried Disk Utility and fsck? If they don't detect anything (and they very well might not), then DiskWarrior is your best bet. DiskWarrior will build you a completely new directory. I should buy stock in Alsoft for all the times i recommend this product; it really is that good. It is the one third party disk utility every Mac owner should have.

megus · May 28, 2003, 12:39 AM

Ok. Tried a couple of things but still no solution found.

- booted in safe mode and ran fsck -y until no errors where reported. No change. BBEdit (among others) will still crash on launch.

- Deleted some preferences (internet config, bbedit and others). BBEdit will launch once after each deletetion but then fail until the preference file is deleted again.

Another weirdness...
Due to the fact that BBEdit wouldn't launch I opened Hydra (which I had laying around) as an alternative. Hydra however refused to quit. I tried force-quitting from the gui, and killing the process in Terminal without success. A manual restart was the only way to recover.

//megus

Rainy Day · May 28, 2003, 01:37 AM

I still think you have a corrupted directory (and DiskWarrior is your best bet in solving that kind of problem).

tkmd · May 28, 2003, 05:01 AM

Create a new user in the system prefernces. Log out - log in as this new user. Try to open these programs again - if they open (no crash) then its a bad preference and it time for some detective work. If they still crash then its something else.

your problem, at least to me, seems liked a corrupted preference.

proton · 07:17 AM

Originally posted by megus:
Hope somebody can save me from being forced to reinstall OS X...

After installing Adobe Reader I've been experiencing application crashes on launch. The applications affected are TextEdit, BBEdit and Transmit (there may well be others).

I've tried repairing permissions without luck. But for some reason emptying the System Cache (using Cocktail) allows the applications to launch once, then it's back to crashing.

I'm not sure Adobe Reader has anything to do with it. I also installed the DivX 5.0.6 beta this morning, so this may also be a possible suspect.

Any help appreciated!

Curiously a friend installed the same combination of applications and is having problems launching applications. In his case Safari, iChat, and Address Book were affected. However, I installed the same apps and have not had a problem.

[EDIT: Add fix information]
The fix is to check in your /Library/QuickTime folder for the file "DivX Pro 5.component". If both the "DivX 5.component" from the latest DivX and the DivX Pro 5 component are installed it causes this problem. Just remove the "DivX Pro 5.component", logout and log back in and your problem will hopefully be solved.

- proton

Appleman · May 28, 2003, 07:15 AM

1. Repair permissions with Disk Utility

2. Safe start (as you did)

3. Agreed: DiskWarrior is the very best (and no, no shares

)

megus · May 28, 2003, 10:25 AM

Originally posted by proton:
The fix is to check in your /Library/QuickTime folder for the file "DivX Pro 5.component". If both the "DivX 5.component" from the latest DivX and the DivX Pro 5 component are installed it causes this problem. Just remove the "DivX Pro 5.component", logout and log back in and your problem will hopefully be solved.

Thank You!

You've just saved my weekend!

//megus