A possible fix for random application issues

Feb 05, '02 04:21:01AM

Contributed by: vaalrus

I was hit by a strange system bug that affected two very different circumstances... At least, they appeared dis-similar while attempting to troubleshoot. I was having an issue where Mindvision based installers would simply quit. Poof. Either immediately, or after a successful athentication if admin privs were required.

A brand new install of the OS worked to fix this, but only for new accounts, not for existing users that were migrated over. (Loooove that self-contained user folder... 'cept it self contains bugs too...).

As well, Bizzarre issues with Acrobat reader were abouding...And this is the weird part. The Acrobat reader installed by the system install would work fine (v5.0.0). The updated Reader (5.0.5) would die if launched as a carbon app, but not as a classic app. Also, an updated install of the Acrobat (editor) app would quit. The only note was a cryptic reference to the "Rulebook Server" in the console.

It turns out the fix was the same fix for all of these issues. As noted on the mindvision website in a kbase article, Installer VISE installers may have difficulty detecting the operating system language on some Mac OS X machines, causing the installer to unexpectedly quit. A workaround is to have the user make a small change in 'International' System Preferences.

That's it. ANY change, and the system will write out a new preference, and all will be happy. I've lost about 18 man-hours trying to troubleshoot this.

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Mac OS X Hints
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