Upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3.5, and Now Safari, Mail and Help Won't Open

September 18, 2004 11:30 AM

I upgraded my mac to 10.3.5, and my Safari, Mail, and Help won't open now. I followed the instructions on the apple support site and did what they said, but they still won't work. Itunes works, and all other apps. I switched to eudora and netscape for now, but would rather stay with Mail and Safari. Any ideas?
posted by amberglow to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

1) repair permissions and see if that helps

2) Try creating a new admin user. See if the apps will launch from that account.
posted by nathan_teske at 11:34 AM on September 18, 2004

If none of those work, you might also try booting into Single User Mode and running fsck -y
posted by willnot at 12:30 PM on September 18, 2004

Here are a couple possibly-related threads from the Apple discussion forums:
one
two
three
It sounds like it might have something to do with fonts. I've had good luck with the Apple forums and with Mac OS X hints lately - you might want to search there.
posted by bendy at 12:31 PM on September 18, 2004

BTW, since we seem to get at least 3-4 Mac technical questions per week, I just wanted to point out a couple troubleshooting resources:

• Macintosh Achaia forum over at ArsTechnica
• Macintouch
• And macosxhints and Apple discussion forums, both of which bendy mentioned already, are fantastic as well.

posted by nathan_teske at 12:48 PM on September 18, 2004

Response by poster: so far i tried repairing permissions and that fsck thing...they all fixed things, but they still don't work...i'm off to try bendy and nathan's places....thanks so far, but no luck...
posted by amberglow at 2:20 PM on September 18, 2004

Before you go ANY further.

Create a new user; this will check if it's a preference giving you headaches.
posted by filmgeek at 3:41 PM on September 18, 2004

amberglow, when I installed a security update in jaguar three or four months ago, the update wrote over my speakers "thingy", which made adjusting the balance on them impossible. After about a half hour with apple support, which included most of the suggestions above, they told me to simply do a clean reinstall, as opposed to an OS "update". Worked like a charm. I get the impression you have a similar scenario.
posted by BlueTrain at 4:16 PM on September 18, 2004

I've seen this before. It was due to the Apple Installer doing something or other very, very incorrectly. Try this:

Create a new user and be that user.

If that doesn't help, get a copy of the "combo updater" -- which is apparently Apple's term for a complete patchset -- and run that.

If that doesn't help, you can do the reinstall, but given how damned long that takes, it's a last resort.
posted by majick at 4:51 PM on September 18, 2004

Response by poster: well, i did a reinstall of my original 10.3, and i think i won't upgrade...i'm now trying to get my bookmarks/prefs/everything back from safari...but it all works now, and my mail picked up all my old mail fine, and my setting for internet etc are all there.

i like 9 better--it was easier to fix things and to find prefs and things, and this weirdness never happened.
posted by amberglow at 5:05 PM on September 18, 2004

Response by poster: thanks all tho.
posted by amberglow at 5:05 PM on September 18, 2004

X will grow on you. Look into BSD unix... it's really a glorious OS to have at the core of your computing experience.
posted by squirrel at 8:09 PM on September 18, 2004

"i like 9 better--it was easier to fix things and to find prefs and things, and this weirdness never happened." - My experience too, but hey - the march of "progress" is unstoppable.

I've had Mac's OS 10 2.8 and OS 10.3 both catastrophically melt down on me.

I look at it as a lesson in the importance of data backups.
posted by troutfishing at 9:35 PM on September 18, 2004

Nah, the weirdness happened in 9, too, but you first encountered it, what? Seven years ago? And you've forgotten about it since or grown used to it.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:59 AM on September 19, 2004

I think it's way easier to keep track of preference files in OS X than it was in OS 9. They're still all in one folder (or nested within that folder if necessary), only now the programs are pretty much required to put their NAMES in the filename to make things easier to find.

Home folder, then Library folder. If it's an Apple app, look for the application name (you'll find Bookmarks.plist right in the Safari folder there, which will save your bookmarks). If it's not an Apple app, open Preferences from there and look for the application name.

Don't mind me, I just feel an overwhelming urge to refute FUD sometimes.

(Did you by any chance move Mail or Safari out of the Applications folder? Say... into an Internet folder to make things more like OS 9? Some of the system upgrades don't play nicely when applications are moved. That might have caused the initial launching problem.)
posted by bcwinters at 11:37 AM on September 19, 2004