The fun of fixing Safari

PepperElf · #1 10-13-2009, 08:11 AM

well first of all let me start off with saying that i love my mac. it's been with me for 2.5 years now and it almost always works.

but sometimes it doesn't. and then you have to figure out what to do, especially if you don't feel like going to the mall to the apple store.

Today Safari decided it wanted a day off.
It also decided I could open locally saved HTML files, but not access my "Top Sites" nor my bookmarks.

I did the regular list of tricks...
Force Quit. Restart. Put Snow Leopard in the drive and force Safari to reinstall. Force software updates to download. Reset some card thingy. Reset power with the battery out.

Nothing. crash crash crash.

But... well I've monkeyed around with some of the files before. Like the time a friend's desktop went funky... I managed to find the plist file for it, delete it and... the computer recreated the file and the desktop looked normal again...

So I tried the same for Safari and did a search for any file or folder named Safari. I found 2 folders...

1) "Username"/Library/Safari
I renamed the folder and restarted Safari.
My favorites went to default. But it still locked up on the Top Sites window.

2) "Somewhere in the same library folder..." Metadata/Safari
Renamed that folder too and restarted Safari
YAY it opened and worked. But my topsites and bookmarks were both at default.

3) Removed the "new" Library/Safari folder and put the old one back in place.
YAY My bookmarks came back !

4) Tried to reinstate JUST the top sites link into the Metadata/Safari folder... crash.

So basically, I had to delete the Metadata/Safari ... let the folder rebuild itself, and then manually enter in my choices for topsites.

=D
and now it's working... i'm posting from safari D

lordlundar · #2 10-14-2009, 05:37 AM

How does that bit in the "crash different" video go?

"I feel as though I'm not really using a mac so much as I'm involved in the mac experience, and if I can do something with the mac while it's willing, so much the better."

PepperElf · #3 10-15-2009, 08:42 AM

heh

and i thought that safari was the end of the issues
had to reinstall snow leopard today - stuck at grey login screen.
thankfully it ended up NOT affecting my files (tho i backed up just in case)

but now it has to re-index all of my files and it might take a few days ... O_o oy