iWeb completely unresponsive

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Level 1

21 points

iWeb completely unresponsive

OK. This is weird. When I open iWeb, the application launches, the menu bars are there, but no page window is visible. Yet, when I hover my mouse over the emptiness, the little yellow boxes that say things like "This image is a placeholder..." etc show up on the screen. Then, if I hit enough rantom commands, a blank page shows up. It shows my web pages in the little space to the left, but I can't click on them or scroll, or even grab the corner and resize the window. I've repaired permissions, I even did a get info on the domain file and opened up permissions on that to everyone. I can boot on a second drive with 10.4 on it and iWeb works perfectly fine. I reinstalled from the fatory disc, and still the same results. Software update says it's up to date. I don't know what else to do. I used AppZapper and completely deinstalled before my last reinstall and still nothing. Now, I did some work on my site on my other drive booted in 10.4, then dragged the domain file from there to where it needs to be on my 10.5 disc, but the problem really started long before that. As soon as I installed 10.5 (I had to do an archive and install because the machine would power down before the computer would restart after the initial installation), but iWeb has never worked after doing the OS upgrade. I hoped the 10.5.1 update would do something, but to no avail. Anyone have any ideas, short of erasing my entire hard drive and starting from scratch? I'd rather poke hot needles in my eyes than go that route. Anyone else hear of a problem like this. Any ideas on a possible fix? I'm completely stumped.

G4 w_1.5 gHz processor under the hood, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 1.5 gHz, 1.2 GB RAM, 560 GB HDs, & many upgrades

Posted on Nov 17, 2007 10:10 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Nov 18, 2007 8:52 AM in response to garygg

The first thing you need to try is to get iWeb working in Leopard.
Quit iWeb, go to Home Folder/Library/Application Support/iWeb and delete the domain.sites2 file - making sure you have a backup of course!
Go to Home Folder/Library/Preferences and delete the com.apple.iWeb plist file.
Relaunch to see if iWeb will create a new domain file and work properly.
If it does, quit the application, put a copy of your website domain.sites2 file in a folder on your hard drive, double click this file to launch iWeb, save and quit. Your website data should now be stored in the default location - Home Folder/Library/Application Support/iWeb - and you should be able to launch iWeb from the application as usual.

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Answer 2

garygg Author

Level 1

21 points

Nov 27, 2007 8:02 PM in response to Roddy

Well, I tried that, and pretty much the same thing happens. iWeb launches, but no window shows up. Then, if I go to my desktop and then tab back to iWeb, a window shows up, but pretty much everything is grayed out. I can get some of the menus to pop down, but pretty much everything is grayed out. I tried deleting the files you listed, and even used AppZapper to try and rid my HD of every iWeb related file and then did another install from the disc, and...same problem. One thing I am noting, after I delete the two files you mentioned and launch iWeb, it also doesn't recreate a new preference file, nor a new domain file. It just seems stuck. The rest of my iLife apps work fine. I have a second HD with 10.4 that I installed in case there were troubles during my Leopard upgrade. So I installed iWeb on that, and it works fine there. Doing a complete wipe of my main drive and reinstalling the OS is out of the question, and far too drastic. I really have no idea how to get this thing to work. For now, when I work in iWeb, I boot to the second drive in 10.4 and work there, but it's kind of a pain. Any other ideas of how to completely get rid of all iWeb remnants and reinstall from scratch?

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Answer 3

Akdream

Level 4

2,170 points

Nov 28, 2007 5:44 AM in response to garygg

Hi Garygg,

Did you also try the following way?

Go to iPhoto, select some photos, go to Share and "Send to iWeb"?
Many people report that going through this procedure 3-4 times awakens their iWeb...

Regards,
Cédric

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Answer 4

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Nov 28, 2007 8:10 AM in response to garygg

Try Cédric's suggestion and, if it doesn't work, send me an email and I will send you a file to try to "jump start" your iWeb.

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Answer 5

garygg Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 1, 2007 3:50 PM in response to garygg

Well, I tried these things with somewhat limited results at best. One thing I did notice, however—and this may have been the crux of the problem to begin with—is that there was more than one copy of iWeb on my hard drive. I had moved some things into a folder on a backup when I did the Leopard upgrade, and afterward, moved it back on the main HD. In that folder was a copy of the iWeb application. What made me suddenly notice this is, when I was trying the share photos to iWeb trick mentioned above, that a second iWeb icon appeared in my dock. So, to keep this brief, I essentially trashed all the iWebs, reinstalled, removed the prefs and the domain file...and it still doesn't work. What I'm assuming is that by having two copies on the machine, I probably tweaked some kind of data file iWeb uses and just confused the heck out of it. I was hoping maybe this additional information may give you an idea as to what my starting point should be now?

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Answer 6

Cyclosaurus

Level 6

12,915 points

Dec 1, 2007 4:14 PM in response to garygg

garygg wrote:
Well, I tried these things with somewhat limited results at best. One thing I did notice, however—and this may have been the crux of the problem to begin with—is that there was more than one copy of iWeb on my hard drive. I had moved some things into a folder on a backup when I did the Leopard upgrade, and afterward, moved it back on the main HD. In that folder was a copy of the iWeb application. What made me suddenly notice this is, when I was trying the share photos to iWeb trick mentioned above, that a second iWeb icon appeared in my dock. So, to keep this brief, I essentially trashed all the iWebs, reinstalled, removed the prefs and the domain file...and it still doesn't work. What I'm assuming is that by having two copies on the machine, I probably tweaked some kind of data file iWeb uses and just confused the heck out of it. I was hoping maybe this additional information may give you an idea as to what my starting point should be now?

You can have two iweb.app in the system, but you must be *very careful*.
I would suggest that you keep only one iweb.app in your system.
If you have iweb2, you may like to try this solution in this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1270976&tstart=0

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Answer 7

garygg Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 10, 2007 12:53 AM in response to Roddy

Hi Roddy,
I sure appreciate all your help. Now this is going to sound weird, but here goes. I tried everything you had suggested earlier and didn't have much luck kick starting it. The other day I put in a new ATI 9700 pro in the machine so I could enjoy all the Apple eye candy and be able to use apps like Photobooth and iMovie. While I was checking out how the machine performs with the new card, I got a wild hair and hit iWeb from the dock and it worked! I really don't think it had anything to do with the video card, because that makes no sense to me other than it being a coincidence. It gave me font substitution errors on every page, so I just opened each one, accepted the substituted font and saved after each page (I read about this error in another thread, so I knew what to do for thqt issue). You probably hit the nail on the head as far as it being a font problem, and maybe I had just kick started it enough that it finally modified one of those cache files and finally started working? I really don't know. But what I do know is I doubt I would have ever gotten this far without all of your kind and generous help. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking your time to offer assistance. Truly the mark of a great guy! Thanks to all of you!

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