Ticket Options

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Os Downgrading

miocyon - May 8, 2005 - 9:02 pm

Alright, so I screwed up. I blindly went and installed Tiger, and then realized that I don't want it (SPSS doesn't run it, and I need that for my research).
So I tried to 'downgrade' to Panther by reinstalling it. Yes, that's the part where I'm really dumb. This mostly worked (after some login problems). Now I can get my desktop to come up in Panther, and I can do most things. I lost some email in the process, and have to reinstall a few third-party system software (e.g. Soundsource and Sophos), but I can live with that punishment for my stupidity. The main problem though is that some Mac programs won't open, e.g. iSync, iCal, Activity Monitor (there may be more, but these are three that I came up with). I have reinstalled both iSync and iCal from disk images downloaded off the Apple website, and still no luck. I've run Disk Utility to repair the disk and permissions, didn't help. What's the next thing to try.
(and no, I of course didn't back-up the whole drive, cuz I don't have a drive big enough; I just backed up some key files).
Thanks for any help you can give.
Cheers,
tony

kainjow - May 8, 2005 - 10:52 pm

Hi Tony,

When you downgraded to Panther, did you do an Archive and Install from the CD?

This is what you might need to do. It appears that some of your system files aren't where they should be or corrupted.

Kevin

miocyon - May 8, 2005 - 11:00 pm

I did do that, but, again, stupidly, got rid of the archived files...
Is there a way to rebuild those files I might need that got moved or corrupted?

kainjow - May 8, 2005 - 11:22 pm

Since we don't know what they are, no. You would have to do an archive and instasll again to get those app' functionality back.

Kevin

miocyon - May 8, 2005 - 11:31 pm

Figured as much...
What do I do with the archived files after I reinstall? How do I get them back where they are supposed to be? Will I have lost my whole calendar in iCal?
Thanks

kainjow - May 8, 2005 - 11:37 pm

When you do an Archive and Install, you are replacing only your /System folder and some Applications. Everything else should be left untouched, which includes anything in your local home folder (~/). So yes your calendars should be fine because they are in ~/Library/Calendars.

However it's always good to backup your data whenever you don't feel sure about doing something. Never hurts

Kevin

miocyon - May 9, 2005 - 12:53 am

Alright, so I reinstalled with the Archive option. Still now luck with iCal, iSync, Activity Monitor (and I've also found that Print Utility, System Profiler don't work either.) What do I do now? Do I have to move some of the files from the archived "Previous System" folder somewhere?
Thanks for all of your help.

kainjow - May 9, 2005 - 12:59 am

Hm that's very odd. Are you getting crash reports? What's exactly not working?

What version of Mac OS X are you on? Have you upgraded to the very latest (10.3.9)?

Kevin

miocyon - May 9, 2005 - 2:17 am

So I just spent a bunch of time updating the 10.3 install I just did, and am now up to 10.3.9, and have all the various updates installing (security updates, java, etc.) What's still not working is:
iCal
Activity Monitor
System Profiler
Print Setup Utility
The first 3 won't even start up. I double click on the icons, and they show the brief opening animation, then quits instantly. Print Setup Utility opens a window, then instantly crashes; it's also the only one that gives me the option of reporting the crash. The others don't get that far...
Thanks again,
tony

miocyon - May 9, 2005 - 2:26 pm

Still not working.
As a check of what's going on I turned on Console and watched what happens when I try and start iCal. It can't find a certain file:
/Applications/iCal.app/Contents/MacOS/iCal
It seems like an odd place for a file, in that it's under a .app file (iCal.app). Can you have files lower in the heirarchy than an application?

kainjow - May 9, 2005 - 2:28 pm

Yes. A .app file is really just a folder that contains files that the application uses.

If you control-click (or right-click) on a .app file, you can select Show Package Contents and browse through the files inside it.

Try doing this for iCal.app and then go to Contents/MacOS/ and see if there is a file in there called iCal. If not, then somehow iCal didn't get installed correctly.

Kevin

miocyon - May 9, 2005 - 2:56 pm

That's cool! I guess I knew that, but didn't know how to get at it...
There is a file there called iCal. So it must in some way be corrupted. I downloaded the iCal installation package from Apple and reinstalled it, and I'm still getting the same error. Perhaps I can try finding that same file in an old copy of iCal I have and replacing it?
Thanks.
tony

kainjow - May 9, 2005 - 4:20 pm

So when you launch iCal, up in the Console window comes a message about how that file /Contents/MacOS/iCal isn't there?

miocyon - May 9, 2005 - 5:15 pm

That is what was happening. After much fiddling though, everything is working now. I found an old copy of iCal on a backed up drive and managed to drag that over and have it work. It took some effort since it wouldn't let me copy it cuz an iCal program was running in the background (the Alarm Schedule), and I didn't have Activity Monitor to kill it. I posted another question regarding my issues with Activit Monitor, and all seems well now.
Thanks for all of your help. I learned something, and ordered a big external drive today to avoid these problems in the future.
Cheers,
tony

kainjow - May 9, 2005 - 5:19 pm

Great, I'm glad it's working well for you now.