[Nels Ferre]

Hi All,

My computer worked fine this morning. I logged onto my bank to pay bills and also checked the Circle.

I realized that I forgot something at the bank's website and went to log on and Safari opens, but will not go to the home page. It freezes with the beach ball. The only way to get out is to force quit.

Other internet applications work fine (Software Update, Last FM), it is just Safari that is dead. I am running Leopard 10.5.6. All of my software is up to date.

Here is what I have tried:

1. Disc Maintenance and repair permissions with Cocktail.

2. I called Apple Care, but they will not help me because I have had the MacBook for longer than 90 days. They want to either charge me $50 for a single incident, or $250 for Apple Care which is 25% of what I paid for the computer in the first place.

3. I downloaded a disc image of Safari from my wife's Macbook and transferred it to my MacBook with a thumb drive. I reinstalled Safari. It still doesn't work.

Any ideas, or do I need to hit the Genius Bar at the Apple Store?

Thanks,
Nels

[orthobiz]

Buy Alsoft DiskWarrior.
Run it.
It rebuilds your hard drive directory.

It's the first thing I do.
Actually, restarting while holding down the option/command/p/r keys until two chimes pass is the FIRST thing I do...

Paul

[mshan]

Did you try resetting Safari and clear all cookies, caches, etc?

Someone on this website could probably also help:  http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=81&flcache=3905306

[Nels Ferre]

Hi All,

Thanks for the suggestions.

Cocktail clears the caches, repairs permissions, etc.

I saw Disc Warrior. Is it worth $100?

I downloaded Firefox on my wife's MacBook and installed it on mine. Works like a champ. Do I need Safari for anything, or is Firefox OK?

Nels

[Nels Ferre]

Update:

Firefox won't work for me: we stream movies from Netflix.

Netflix doesn't play well with Firefox.

What is the option/command/p/r wait for two chimes salute? Sorry if that sounds stupid, I only left Windows last September.

Nels

[planet10]

Try tossing Safari's preference file...



dave

[Nels Ferre]

Thanks Dave,

I tried that. It didn't work. 

Nels

[orthobiz]

Turn the computer off.
Restart the computer.
Immediately hold down the option and apple (command key) with your left index and long fingers. Simulataneously hold the R key with your index finger and the P key with your small finger. You are now simultaneously holding down four separate keys.

Wait.

You will hear a chime as the computer tries to boot. It will then reboot and you will hear the chime a second time. Let go of all your fingers and allow the computer to completely reboot. See if Safari works.

It's ALWAYS worth a try. It's free.

I am not a big freeware/shareware tinkerer and I have had Macs exclusively for over 20 years. DiskWarrior has gotten me out of trouble many, many times. I believe if you had to have ONE single utility program, it should be DiskWarrior. I know others may disagree and as always, YMMV.

Recently I tried DiskWarrior on my kids' computer and it didn't work. Drive Genius worked like a charm in this case. First time in a long time DiskWarrior failed.

Good luck.

Paul

[avta]

Nels:

I've had good luck using the Mac forums. Here's one for Safari.

http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=169

Guy

[Nels Ferre]

Hi All,

The problem is solved in a very round about way.

I never did get Safari to work, even after a visit to the Genius Bar and (at their recommendation) purchasing Drive Genius. They also carried Disk Warrior, but everyone there said Drive Genius.

I ran Drive Genius, and it found and corrected a bunch of problems it detected.

I finally deleted everything in my Internet Plugins folder. Then, I went to the Netflix site and reinstalled the movie player, which downloaded a new installation of Microsoft Silverlight, which the player needs to work.

I then figured I would try to stream a movie, and it worked. I guess the old installation of Silverlight wasn't "seeing" Firefox before.

I them used App Zapper to kill Safari from my computer.

Works like a champ!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Nels

[dB Cooper]

Nels,
I seem to be having similar trouble with Safari. It will launch and load a page or two, then.... nothing. No beach ball, but the progress bar just stops and sits there.

And it isn't the only offender. Unfortunately, I seem to be seeing a steady upward trend in 'bugs' on Apple software in general. I attribute this to the software increasingly being 'bloated' with marginally useful, 'foo-foo', eye-candy type features. (Translucent menu bar, 3D Dock, was anybody asking for that?) I switched from Windoze to Mac to escape BS like that. Linux here I come?

I use Omniweb which isn't free but is a reasonable $15 and has features I haven't seen duplicated in other browsers. The other day I tried to stream a BSG episode from SciFi. The video was choppy as hell on FF, with at least a full second of latency on the audio. Both issues were dramatically reduced in Omniweb.

And buy AppleCare. It's worth it. Especially on the plastic Macbooks.

[chosenhandle]

SNIP

And buy AppleCare. It's worth it. Especially on the plastic Macbooks.

I second that opinion. Yes, it costs about $250, but 3 years of good phone support and onsite hardware service make it worthwhile.

[Nels Ferre]

Hi All,

An update..

After using Firefox for a while, I decided to try to install Safari one last time, not thinking it would install.

It installed and works perfectly!  I made no other changes to the system since my problem started, so I have no idea what "fixed" it. 

Firefox has been uninstalled (AppZapper) and everything is good now. 

Nels