[iamnid]

I went to use sherlock the other day (ibook 1.4ghz OS X 10.4.2) and all the channels were in German. I changed the preferred language to English in the International Control Panel -- and then when I went back to sherlock... all of the channels have disappeared! I can't even add the default channels back. Anybody have this problem too? Know how to fix it? Basically when I load sherlock now there are no channel buttons up top and if I click "channels" up top and then pick "apple channels" it shows teh default channels but all of their names are "null" and if I add them to my toolbar they dont work.

[iamnid]

never mind -- I deleted the sherlock cache and that fixed it.

[Barry]

I just tried Sherlock. All the Apple Chanels load but are blank. The 3d party chanels work. I trashed the prefs, same thing.

[OAW]

I had the same thing happen. First they disappeared. Then some came back but in different languages. I searched the forums and someone had said something about clearing the Sherlock cache fixed a similar problem. I did it and everything came back fine.

The only thing I even use Sherlock for these days is the Movies channel. Unfortunately, none of the Movie widgets duplicate all of the functionality. It would be nice if one of them would do something as simple as allow you to click a movie and open up a website where you can purchase tickets for the movie.

OAW

[Briareus]

I have the same problem and no solution worked for me - it's not worth doing a full OS reinstall, so I basically gave up on Sherlock and really don't miss it at all.

[pendragon]

I too was having problems much as all of you have described. Finally, I found this on an Apple Discussion Forum (since locked). But it worked for me:

Navigate to your user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation

Open the web foundation folder and press command a (for select all)

Drag all of the selected contents to the trash and empty the trash.

Navigate back to user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation and select the web foundation folder. Press command i (for get info)

In the get info window, check "locked"

Launch Sherlock and all of the previously working channels should load and continue to do so. When you quit the program and relaunch, each channel you select will reload again (because the channels are no longer being cached).

[andre1970]

Still nothing works here! Channels are in ...french (french is not one of my selected languages) and no channel appears (or can be used).
1. Is it possible to reinstall only Sherlock from the Tiger DVD?
2. Does Sherlock work normally with you guys (on 10.4.2 systems)?

[dru]

Sherlock was simply not working here either. The channels were blank. I tried deleting the cache, I tried copying the cache from an fresh Tiger install and nothing.

I copied com.apple.Sherlock preferences from the fresh Tiger install and the channels came back. The PICTURES and PHONE BOOK channels are "temporarily" down.

I've locked the prefs file to prevent this from happening again.

Now if I can just get the Calculator to update the currency exchange rates...

Watson is dead, Sherlock is unreliable now and I'm not fond of resource hogging Dashboard.

[dj80sRetro]

Originally Posted by iamnid

never mind -- I deleted the sherlock cache and that fixed it.

---------


so how do you delete the SHERLOCK Cache

im also having problems addind channels and i cant see the Channels for PICs or for anything.
it seems that i cant see any of what i had before..

what can i do

help

[dj80sRetro]

Originally Posted by OAW

I had the same thing happen. First they disappeared. Then some came back but in different languages. I searched the forums and someone had said something about clearing the Sherlock cache fixed a similar problem. I did it and everything came back fine.

The only thing I even use Sherlock for these days is the Movies channel. Unfortunately, none of the Movie widgets duplicate all of the functionality. It would be nice if one of them would do something as simple as allow you to click a movie and open up a website where you can purchase tickets for the movie.

OAW

-------------
so how do you delete the SHERLOCK Cache

im also having problems addind channels and i cant see the Channels for PICs or for anything.
it seems that i cant see any of what i had before..

what can i do

help

[dj80sRetro]

Originally Posted by pendragon

I too was having problems much as all of you have described. Finally, I found this on an Apple Discussion Forum (since locked). But it worked for me:

Navigate to your user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation

Open the web foundation folder and press command a (for select all)

Drag all of the selected contents to the trash and empty the trash.

Navigate back to user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation and select the web foundation folder. Press command i (for get info)

In the get info window, check "locked"

Launch Sherlock and all of the previously working channels should load and continue to do so. When you quit the program and relaunch, each channel you select will reload again (because the channels are no longer being cached).

------------------------

ok i found out but i can not seem to lock it ... it wont let me .. how do i do that.. .thanks

[pliny]

Originally Posted by iamnid

I went to use sherlock the other day (ibook 1.4ghz OS X 10.4.2) and all the channels were in German. I changed the preferred language to English in the International Control Panel -- and then when I went back to sherlock... all of the channels have disappeared! I can't even add the default channels back. Anybody have this problem too? Know how to fix it? Basically when I load sherlock now there are no channel buttons up top and if I click "channels" up top and then pick "apple channels" it shows teh default channels but all of their names are "null" and if I add them to my toolbar they dont work.

German? At least that is some Latin characters. My Sherlock channels turned Chinese.

I think Sherlock is done for. The channels stop working becasue the sites change and they are not updated. Or because the channels are disabled and moved to Dashboard. The movie channel is far superior to anythng on Dashboard which to me is a pale imitation of the mighty Sherlock.

The movie channel gave you a blurb, pics, and trailer all in one window.

If your channels have disappeared in Sherlock under 10.4, or if Sherlock is stuck, quit Sherlock then delete these three things:

- the file Library/Preferences/com.apple.Sherlock.plist
- the folder Library/Preferences/Sherlock
- the folder Library/Caches/Sherlock

Doing this won't mean it won't get corrupted again....

[pendragon]

dj80sRetro

When you navigate back to user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation and select the web foundation folder and press command i (for get info), is there not a little box to check in General? It’s right below “Color Label”

[alphasubzero949]

Originally Posted by pliny

If your channels have disappeared in Sherlock under 10.4, or if Sherlock is stuck, quit Sherlock then delete these three things:

- the file Library/Preferences/com.apple.Sherlock.plist
- the folder Library/Preferences/Sherlock
- the folder Library/Caches/Sherlock

You mean ~/Library/... right?

[pliny]

right-- ~/Library.

[janabo]

Hello,

I am a severely disabled person and I rely on using my Sherlock (I just installed the Tiger OS)

Everything on Sherlock seems OK except for the channel called Internet that comes with Sherlock...For some reason the Interent channel is still there but just the icon and when you click on it it says internet (null) and nothing comes up....I did the thing where I opened up the channels and tryed to drag and drop the internet channel back to the tool bar (one of the things it said to try in help) It dragged OK but still says null...

Is there anythig I can do to add that channel back?

Thanks so much,

jana

[didge]

I just installed Tiger and updated to 10.4.7.

I have the same problem :-
1. all Sherlock channels were empty;
2. Sherlock then downloaded the channels; BUT
3.Each

[didge]

oops - I'll try again ...

I just installed Tiger and updated to 10.4.7.

I have the same problem :-
1. all Sherlock channels were empty;
2. Sherlock then downloaded the channels; BUT
3. Each onejust returned (null).

Basically - they just don't work.

Janabo's post is 8 months old - and used an earlier version of OSX.
There are quite a few users with this problem ...

Has anyone found a fix ?

[Thorzdad]

As far as I can tell, Sherlock is dead. We used to use the Movies channel all the time, but now it just sits empty. I mean..."No results found for Chicago, IL" ???? C'mon.

[plastiqueusa]

Sherlock is working for me after upgrading to 10.4.7, Movie channel and all.

[didge]

I just upgraded all my other Macs to 10.4.7 - iMac, G3 and G4 ...
Sherlock works perfectly on ALL of them !

So - why doesn't it work on my DP G5 ?

There's something funny with the way the channels are loaded ...

[bbales]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

As far as I can tell, Sherlock is dead. We used to use the Movies channel all the time, but now it just sits empty. I mean..."No results found for Chicago, IL" ???? C'mon.

This happened to me before and after searching, I did find a solution. Apparently it's a fairly well-documented issue (and in fact, movies don't work on my laptop, but do on my desktop).

I'd tell you the fix, but I can't remember where I stashed it. It's not, apparently, on this machine! But do a search on the apple discussion boards.

[bbales]

OK, I found it. And it works -- I just used it on my laptop and the movie channel is back.

Here it is:

Navigate to your user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation

Open the web foundation folder and press command a (for select all)

Drag all of the selected contents to the trash and empty the trash.

Navigate back to user folder/library/caches/sherlock/web foundation and select the web foundation folder. Press command i (for get info)

In the get info window, check "locked"

Launch Sherlock and all of the previously working channels should load and continue to do so. When you quit the program and relaunch, each channel you select will reload again (because the channels are no longer being cached).

[Thorzdad]

bbbales...I've seen that fix before. Unfortunately, the "Locked" checkbox is grayed-out for me.

[himself]

you probably need administrative access to enable that checkbox.

edit: I had forgotten all about sherlock until I saw this thread (assumed sherlock was "dead")... I guess dashboard and its widgets are meant to provide the same or similar functionality.

[didge]

Hi bbales,
Thanks for your post ...
I should have included in my original post that I've read everything available on this topic in this forum, the Apple support forums (which just say to upgrade the OS) and google ...

I've tried deleting the caches, locking the WebFoundation folder, deleting the prefs files (seperately and together), booting in safe mode ... ... ...

Sherlock works fine on every other Mac I own running OSX10.4.7, and also works on my G5 machine for all other users - even in fast switch mode. All users on my machine run the same Sherlock (ie I have only 1 copy of Sherlock on my machine).

If I empty the Web Foundation folder and lock it, then launch Sherlock, the WF folder remains empty (of course) - but Sherlock behaves the same way - it loads (null) channels. The channels aren't cached, so Sherlock re-loads them every time it's launched - but they still load as (null).

If I then UNlock the Web Foundation folder and launch Sherlock , Sherlock loads (null) channels the first time it's launched, but still loads (null) channels every subsequent time it's launched - it just loads them faster because they're being cached.

Some clues ...
1. If I delete the Sherlock prefs file (which contains the channel ICONS) and then re-launch Sherlock, the icons are initially missing - but quickly re-loaded - which proves that Sherlock is loggin on to Apple and loading the channels (verified by the fact that the icons do NOT reload if I log off the internet).

2. after I empty the WF folder and launch Sherlock (and then do NOTHING) , the WF folder fill up with about 30 cache items - but Sherlock has done nothing so far and only has 8 channels ... what exactly is being cached ?

3. Sherlock behaves the same with 3rd party (non-apple) channels.
4. If I copy the caches from another user (where Sherlock works) to my ~user library, Sherlock still doesn't work.

4. IF I copy the WF caches from a working ~user account to my home account ehan lauch Sherlock, it makes no difference - Sherlock still doesn';t work.

In my mind, this proves that the cached file aren't the problem.

I suspect a privileges issue ...

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by himself

you probably need administrative access to enable that checkbox.

I do have admin access.