[PlacidTubs]

I am running panther, and suddenly for no reason I can't seem to get preview to work. When I open a picture file that should open with preview, I get the beach ball for a few seconds and then nothing. If I open preview directly then it seems to work, but when I click on open, the whole program freezes and I have to force quit. I have no idea what is wrong. I tried repearing permissions but it didn't help. Everything else seems to be working fine. Anyone got any suggestions?

note: if I open the same image in photoshop it works fine, so nothing is wrong with the files.

[david_copperfield]

it obviously is the problem of Preview. In fact, there are many other picture viewers, like ACDsee.

I have dropped most of buit-in applications of mac, such as safari, which quits unexpectly all the time.

[PlacidTubs]

I liked preview though, and there was no reason why it should have stopped working. Is it possible I can grab it again from my install discs or something? If not, could someone perhaps get in touch and send me a copy of their preview, to see if replacing it with a working version works? thanks.

[osxrules]

Pacifist should let you get Preview from the install disc. I think Apple should put all the OS X apps online in case something goes wrong.

Try checking the console to see if that gives any useful information and possibly delete the Preview preferences.

I only use Preview for PDFs these days. I use GraphicConverter for most of my picture stuff (viewing, cropping, resizing, re-encoding etc.) and Photoshop for editing.

Anyway, here's a copy of Preview:

http://www.geocities.com/ajr650/Preview.app.zip

I removed the international localizations so it's only a 1MB download.

[PlacidTubs]

Originally Posted by osxrules

Pacifist should let you get Preview from the install disc. I think Apple should put all the OS X apps online in case something goes wrong.

Try checking the console to see if that gives any useful information and possibly delete the Preview preferences.

I only use Preview for PDFs these days. I use GraphicConverter for most of my picture stuff (viewing, cropping, resizing, re-encoding etc.) and Photoshop for editing.

Anyway, here's a copy of Preview:

http://www.geocities.com/ajr650/Preview.app.zip

I removed the international localizations so it's only a 1MB download.

Thanks for the link, but I'm afraid it doesnt work. It won't run, I think it may know it is from another computer. I also tried pacifist, but the newly extracted version still has my original problem. How would I go about checking the console and deleting preferences? This is one of the most anoying thing to happen on my mac since I got it last year. I appreciate all the help so far though.

[osxrules]

Ah sorry, it would be because I'm on Tiger. I was a bit puzzled for a minute why it didn't work but I see you're on Panther and binaries aren't usually backwards compatible. Try the link again, I've updated it with the Panther version of Preview.

To check the console, go into /Applications/Utilities and launch the console application. That's one of the most useful tools for finding out what an app is doing.

Launch Preview and watch for any changes in the console window and do whatever you do to make it hang up. Unfortunately, Apple apps tend to not give much feedback so the console might not give you much feedback.

To delete the preferences, go into /Users/<your name>/Library/Preferences/ and delete com.apple.Preview.plist. You shouldn't have to delete com.apple.preview.bookmarks.plist because that's just where Preview remembers the last page you were on in a PDF. If you are having trouble with PDFs specifically, you can give it a go.

If deleting the preferences doesn't help, you can go a bit lower level and try to debug the application. You need the developer tools for that though. With them installed, you would type gdb in the terminal (different from console) and drag preview into the window and hit return. Be sure to quit Preview before doing that or it'll give you an error saying that it's already open (well it says there is a problem with the bootstrap register but that's what it means).

Then it should stop at a line saying (gdb). You then type run and hit return and it will load Preview and tell you it is loading libraries. Then just use Preview to see what happens in the window.

Another thing you could try is emptying your system caches. I use a program called Cocktail for that. You can get it from versiontracker.com . Launch the app and put in your password. Then go to files and then the caches tab. Select both System and User caches and hit clean. You then need to restart your machine.

It will take longer to restart than usual because it has to fill the caches back up again.

Is Preview hanging up for all types of files or just some types? I tried a PDF file in Preview once and it hung up and I didn't know what it was doing. It opened fine in Acrobat. So, I churned it through a PDF shrinker and it opened in Preview OK. Files made with Adobe software isn't always compatible with other apps.

[wataru]

The first thing to try is deleting preferences, not replacing the whole app. If that doesn't do it, try making a new user account and seeing if the problem still happens. If it doesn't, the problem is with some preference you didn't delete. If it does, then try replacing the app.