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Level 1

0 points

Time Machine Pref Pane not responding

I hope someone can help me. Until recently I have used a wired time capsule to back my iMac up to. I switched to a G-Raid2 wired back up disk and now connect to my time capsule wirelessly, but didn't delete my backup from the time capsule. I realised there were still things on my time capsule backup that were no longer on my G-Raid2, so I switched drives in Time Machine and restored what I needed.

I then tried to switch back, and the "Change Disk..." button is depressing but not responding. A quick look in the console and I got the following dialogue:

06/03/2009 20:46:16 System Preferences[474] * -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: BonjourServerURL)

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I downloaded the buggy airport utility update 5.4.1, then reverted back to 5.3.2. Installed the time capsule firmware update, then reinstalled 5.4.1 (was the only way I could do it). I've restarted and still no luck.

I've tried to reinstall time machine from my OSX disks, but it doesn't seem to be included in the installation package with the time machine icon on.

Please help!

🙂

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 6, 2009 12:56 PM

26 replies

[ian]

Level 1

15 points

Mar 14, 2009 5:35 PM in response to CeeB

Wow - would never of thought to've looked at BTMM as a culprit.
I have it switched on on all my machines, even thought it only actually works once in a blue moon from one particular machine to another and not any other machines or the other way around.

If this crops up again I'll uncheck it and see if that helps.

Joel_H Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 15, 2009 3:16 AM in response to [ian]

I echo your 'wow'!

Just turned BTMM off - time machine worked. Turned it back on, it didn't work. Hope you don't mind, - I still won't mark this problem as solved because there really needs to be a fix in some update or other.

But thanks so much! I can now delete the extra admin account I made 🙂

[ian]

Level 1

15 points

Mar 15, 2009 6:04 PM in response to Joel_H

Joel_H wrote:
Hope you don't mind, - I still won't mark this problem as solved

Good grief! Of course I don't mind!
(If that remark was directed at me... if not, I'm sure nobody else minds either!)
I'm here to share knowledge with my peers to sort something out between ourselves.
I'm not here collecting points or anything. 🙂

Top marks to CeeB though for finding the BTMM link. Nice one CeeB.

Here's hoping this one gets fixed.

Mar 17, 2009 3:19 AM in response to Joel_H

I ran into the same problem recently after swapping the hard drive in my MacBook Pro.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to restore my data from the old, failing drive, rather than using Time Machine. I then realised that the different UUID for the volume on my new drive was going to cause problems and rather than hacking things to get them to work I decided to delete my Time Capsule sparse image and start from scratch, at which point I was dismayed to find that System Preferences wouldn't allow me to choose a destination for my new backup.

Deleting the relevant preferences and caches didn't help, but *what did fix the problem* for me was +booting into safe mode+ (hold down shift when you hear the start-up chime until the spinner appears under the grey apple), logging in, opening System Preferences, opening the Time Machine pane, and then choosing the destination volume which then worked normally and allow me to specify my Time Capsule. I then rebooted normally and checked that all was working ok and successfully made my initial backup. No problems since then, I'm happy to report.

Mar 17, 2009 4:18 AM in response to Joe Carroll1

but you read some postings above by CeeB there is a much easier method?
just disable MobileMe / Back To My Mac, then open Time Machine / Change Disk as desired, re-activate BTMM
or wait until Snow Leopard 🙂 or 10.5.7, 10.5.8 ...
I sent a bug report via http://www.apple.com/feedback/mobileme.html yesterday

Mar 22, 2009 11:50 AM in response to Martin Matthey1

Wow, this problem had been bugging me for some time and thankfully I came across this thread. Disabling BTMM instantly made the 'Change backup disk' button responsive, so I changed the disk and re-enabled BTMM. Problem solved!

It's still obviously a bug Apple needs to fix, but at least we have a workaround for now. How bizarre though!