Calling all Mac Folks!

[steforama]

My mom just called and asked me to ponder an issue she's having with her iBook. It seems as though she can't open Mail or her Address Book or get to the Dashboard - when she clicks on the icon, nothing happens. She is able to open other things and can get online - and yes, she has restarted.

Any thoughts? If all else fails, she might come here this weekend and I can take a look at it.

Comments

[incanus.livejournal.com]

Hmm, gonna be hard to find anything out without you at it.

Couple things to try:

1) Have her create a new account. She should be able to get to System Preferences from the Apple menu. Then, login and see if the dock, dashboard, Mail, or Address Book work. If they do, then reinstalling is not going to help as it's specific to her user settings.

2) Did she just upgrade to 10.4.10? Or did this just start? She could try downloading the combo updater here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx10410comboupdateppc.html

That should bring even a stock 10.4 install up to 10.4.10. Of course this is useless if #1 shows that it's isolated to her account.

3) Try Apple-clicking Mail or Address Book in the dock to show their locations. They should show in Applications. Try launching them from there.

A couple ideas...

[steforama.livejournal.com]

I tried the new account and the same problems existed. Also, her Dock is missing too and Mail and Address Book don't open in the Applications folder. Tried a few other things as well, but nothing worked. I will try the combo updater when I have the laptop in my hands. Luckily, my mom doesn't really keep that much on it, so doing a back-up of her files and re-installing won't be too much of a hassle.

[incanus.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that sounds like the core stuff is hosed. Wonder how that happened.

As for reinstalling, not sure if you knew about it, but there is an "archive and install" option that lets you keep /Users, /Library, and /Applications (except for default ones) intact and just restores everything else. This includes network settings and such.

Good luck!

[steforama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's really weird because my mom is not one to fiddle around with things (she wouldn't be deleting system files willy-nilly or whatever). She's pretty sure that the other night, she turned the laptop off and then a few minutes later, turned it back on because she remembered she needed to look some things up and when it booted up, this issue started.

Ah, archive and install. I know of the option, but I've never used it - sounds like it will be the best option here.