iPhone 3GS from AT&T. Free Shipping
Tutorial: What to do when a Mac OS X application will not launch
It?s a frustrating scenario: You click on a regularly used application only to find that it will not launch ? either bouncing indefinitely in the Mac OS X Dock or simply providing no feedback whatsoever. There are a number of potential solutions for this problem, ranging from simple and relatively quick to more tedious.
Update prebinding Many cases of application launch-failure can be resolved easily by simply updating prebinding, via the following steps:
- Log in as an administrator
- Open the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities)
- Type: sudo update_prebinding -root / -force and press Return.
- When prompted for a password, enter your admin password, and press Return again. The process may take a few minutes, and you may see various messages flash by. The process is complete when the Terminal returns to a normal prompt.
- Type exit and press Return.
- Check for the capability to launch the problematic application.
Kill process in activity monitor Killing an application-related process via Activity Monitor (click the item then press the 'Quit Process' button) can allow proper application launch. This is especially applicable in situations where a restart cures problems with application launching, as the offending process(es) will, of course, be killed by the restart process.
Launch Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities), then find the process associated with the problematic application, then quit it and attempt re-launching the applications.
Delete appropriate .plist files A non-launching application can be the result of a corrupt or otherwise defunct associated .plist file (for more information on exactly what a .plist file is, see this series of articles)
Most of the preferences files that we will be talking about are stored in a folder named Preferences, and located in the Library folder of your home directory, e.g.:
- ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist.
Go to the ~/Library/Preferences folder, and search for any .plist files that may be associated with the application you are having trouble with. Drag the .plist file(s) [many applications have more than one associated .plist file, so be careful to scour for all of them] to the Desktop, then re-attempt launching the application.
You can also use an application like Preferential Treatment to check for corrupt .plist files.
Re-install the application Try re-installing your application from its original media or download source.
If an Apple application or component is not launching properly, you might need to restore it from the Apple installation discs per the instructions in our tutorial "Re-installing Apple applications from a Mac OS X disc/update package using Pacifist."
Clearing caches Try using a utility like Tiger Cache Cleaner, OnyX, or Cocktail to perform series of system cache deletion routines. Go from light, to medium to deep (the ordinal levels are defined differently in each application), checking to see if your afflicted application launches properly after each.
Also, check the following folder for application-specific cache files that can be deleted, or at least temporarily removed:
/Library/Application Support (look inside the folders here for files that end with .cache, and delete them)
Make sure permissions are correct A range of permissions issues can effect Mac OS X applications, causing them not to launch.
In these cases, the first thing to try is a disk permissions repair routine using Apple's Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities).
Failing that, startup from your Mac OS X installation disc (insert it, then restart while holding down the "C" key). After the startup process is complete, go to the "Utilities" menu and select Disk Utility. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button.
In some odd cases (usually after a backup or when transferring backed up data back to a startup device), permissions on the "MacOS" directory (the directory that normally stores the executable binary in a Mac OS X application) can become incorrect.
In order to fix this problem, use the following steps:
- Click on the afflicted application to select it in the Finder
- Either click the application while holding the control key, or use the "Action" menu (the icon looks like a gear) to access the option "Show Package Contents"
- Open the "Contents" folder therein, and then find the "MacOS" folder
- Modify the permissions on this folder to give it "execute" permissions for all users. Do this by opening the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) and typing the following command (don't press return afterward):
- sudo chmod 755
- After typing this, drag the "MacOS" folder to the Terminal window -- its path should appear. Press return, and you will be prompted for your administrator password, which you should enter.
Check CoreAudio As noted in Knowledge Base article #301658, some Apple applications might not open fully or at all if the Digidesign Core Audio driver has been installed as part of a Pro Tools version 6.9 installation.
Apple says to follow these steps if you are affected by this issue:
- Updating your Digidesign Core Audio driver may resolve the issue. You can find the latest versions for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) at http://digidesign.com/download/coreaudio. If that doesn't help, continue to step 2.
- Open Audio MIDI Setup (/Applications/Utilities).
- Click the Audio Devices tab.
- From the Default Output pop-up menu, choose Built-in Audio.
Check for errant plug-ins Some application launch failures can be caused by problematic plug-ins or other add-ons. Safari and other Web browsers are notorious for suffering from this issue, as are some other extensible applications like iMovie.
Check the following locations for any recently added files, or any files implicated in error messages generated when you attempt to launch the problematic application:
- /Library/Internet Plug-ins
- ~/Library/InputManagers
Re-apply the Mac OS X combo updater Try re-applying the latest Mac OS X combo updater from Apple's software downloads page. Doing so can resolve issues with system components or delete specific files that can resolve application launching issues.
Create a new user account Try creating a new user account, and check if the application launches under it. If so, a user-specific corruption issue is likely at play -- see the above sections regarding .plist files and caches. See our tutorial "Common workaround -- create a new user account" for more information.
Archive and Install As a last resort, try performing an Archive and Install process, which will retain some user settings but otherwise leave you with a fresh Mac OS X installation.
Also, check with the application's developer for compatibility notes regarding the version of Mac OS X you are running, and revert to an earlier iteration if necessary.
Like what you've found in this tutorial? Get more troubleshooting guidance (updated daily) by subscribing to MacFixIt Pro.
Resources
check is whether the problem exists in only one user account, or in all. Try
launching the application in a pristine test account, creating one if necessary.
If it still doesn't launch, the problem lies in the application itself or in some
system-wide configuration.
If the application never launched even when newly installed, then the
executable bits may not have been set. The article gives incorrect instructions
for fixing this. For a typical Mach-O application, the file
/Applications/Foo.app/Contents/Mac OS/Foo
needs to be executable, not just the directory it's in.
helps someone alleviate a problem, they'll never know what specific culprit
was causing the trouble. Not something I would have expected from
MacFixit.
Dont be so grumpy, I liked the list.
Get Info on the application. I recently could not open Entourage and got a
strange error message of "no such disk". I checked the owner and found it had
been set to administrator. I unlocked it, changed the owner to system and it
started working again.
(classic) applications.
Insert "Check the HD with Disk Warrior." as the first thing to try and shift all the
other items down.
app suite named Applejack, now in version 1.42 .
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596
Boot in single user mode and type "applejack auto restart" at the prompt.
This will, amongst other niceties, look for corrupt pref files and try to fix them.
MS Word opens fine in my user (admin level), but when my kids try to open
the application in their account (user level), the app will start up, then crash.
When I try to open the app in my pristine test account (admin level), the same
thing happens - it opens, then crashes.
Now here's the strange part: when my kids open MS Word by opening a Word
document, the application opens normally. They can work with it just fine and
open and save new Word docs.
The application just won't open otherwise.
I checked permissions, I deleted preferences/plists, nothing I do helps. The
workaround is so minor, a solution isn't urgent - but it sure bugs the heck
out of me.
Figured it out. Apparently, Flip4Mac is the culprit. When I uninstalled it, MS
Word starts up normally in all users.
God, I love Microsoft.
You could try one or both of the following (this is for office 2004):
1. For each user, go to username/Documents/Microsoft User Date and delete the Normal template. It may be corrupt.
2. Use the Font Book application to see if there are any corrupted fonts in your system library or individual user libraries. This is a tricky subject I don't know much about, but I do know that corrupt fonts are a cause of Word crashes.
Specifically a "universal" binary will only load on Mac OS X version 10.3.9 for
PowerPC-based Macs and 10.4.x for Intel-based Macs.
In some cases the "universal" binary may only load on Mac OS X 10.4 and newer
on PowerPC-based Macs. No error message will appear and no error entry may
appear in the Console - it simply won't launch.
Fun fun fun!
Yup, that's right
Version 1.08 ("universal binary") of Foxtrot just doesn't launch in 10.3.9.
Does launch in my 10.4.5 partition. Version 1.0.3 works in 10.3.9. I'm am
sure that developers will do less and less checking for backwards
compatiblity as time goes on. This means: if you don't have 10.4.x, you don't
get bug fixes in these "universal" improvements. Ironic because I compared
foxtrot to spotlight and found the combination of FT and find file better than
spotlight for my needs...and as for widgets, who cares?
I'm sure as soon as Leopard comes out 10.3.9 won't even get security fixes
any longer.
Which is a bummer, because I don't like Tiger, read nothing but horror
stories, and never have had a single problem with 10.3.9 (and lovely old
itunes 4.7.1) with firewire, airport, importing songs, my ipod, or anything
else, and have devices that I have confirmed run ONLY under 10.3.9 with
irreplaceable functions (Can anyone else say OCR?) Maybe I'll have to switch
by the time 10.4.9 comes out, and finally runs properly, while every body else
is beta testing Leopard for Apple at their own time and expense...Maybe the
OCR that's supposed to be in Leopard will be great, by the time Leopard gets
to 10.5.9....
Does anyone get the feeling Apple is just trying to do too many things at
once to get anything perfectly right? Sound like anyone else we know?
occasions without ever making the VERY important point that PT only finds
plist corruption in certain instances, and that its failure to report plist
corruption does NOT necessarily mean that all of a user's plist files are A-OK.
what to do. Others tell me the phone number and email of the developer shows
up sometimes!
Most times the plist deletion works. I rarely have this problem - just my 2
cents work re troubleshooting poroblems.
- most are not Universal Binary
- nearly always and in all accounts these apps will launch if they are the first or among the first apps launched, but will attempt to launch but crash if launched later
- force quiting the 'translated' from the Terminal or Activity Monitor then relaunching them nearly always succeeds for that app, but seems to then require killing 'translated' for each subsequent launch of a PPC app.
for what its worth
My solution: mount the drive in FireWire Target mode and use iPartition to change the format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
Shazam! Worked like a charm :)
after installing 10.4.10
Thanks!
I'm back up and running by applying the first fix.
Cheers again
It was mentioned that Microsoft Word was having a very similar issue. If the new account does not have this proble then the most likely culprit is the default.doc is corrupt. Copy the default.doc from the new profile to the affected profile and it should clear up the problem. Baseball Bats For Sale Cheap Baseball Bats
- by branddaze November 22, 2008 1:55 AM PST
- Air Jordan Shoes, New Jordans, Cheap Air Jordans on Sale, Cheap Jordans, New Air Jordans, Cheap Air Force Ones,
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (23 Comments)Cheap Jordan Shoes
Cheap Air Jordan