Quark XPress 8.12 NOT WORKING in 10.6.2

Hi, sk1975,

I regret to hear that you had issues with software from Quark before, however I doubt it has anything to do with your current problem.

Issues, which are not general and most likely machine specific or could be caused by a specific parameter, are hard to trouble shoot - especially remotely.
Like in Jim's case, where it probably was a hardware issue, see here: http://forums.quark.com/p/22379/90396.aspx#90396

So please allow us to have somebody walk you through steps to isolate the root cause. Once we know that we can help.

Let me your email or - better - phone number please, so that we can help.

Regards
Matthias

As I reported on the Quark forum, I exchanged the MacBook Pro for an identical machine (4GB RAM instead of 8GB). QuarkXPress 8.12 installed, launched and validated properly. Speculation is that it was a RAM problem, but that has not been confirmed.

Jim

Not to put the cat amongst the pigeons or anything like that but I am very happily running 10.6.2 and quark 8.12 with no problems at all. No problems activating - and even the 'newish' quark activation chat line worked - which in itself was a miracle. So it does work - and works well

sk1975 wrote:
That is very interesting that it could have been the RAM.

I have the Creative Suite CS4 and Suitcase Fusion 2 installed on the machine and they are running great. Its just when I got to Quark 8… it will quit out when I try and "Activate Now" If I just hit "Continue" it will launch the software and run fine. But every time I want to launch the software, it will open with that window, giving me the option of either "Activate Now" or "Continue"

I am waiting to hear back from a Quark Tech. I will post my results on here when I hear back from the Tech

Sk,
What you describe is EXACTLY the same problem I was having with QuarkXPress. I also installed CS4 and it ran with no problem.

Just to be clear, it was only speculation about possible bad RAM and I do not know what really caused the problem. I took the opportunity to swap out the computer as a last resort...and Quark now works. The Apple Store offered to do some diagnostic testing on the RAM, but I had already decided to move forward with a swap, so I never had it tested.
I know its a huge step, but if your in a position to trade in the computer, that may be your best option.

I experienced the same issue with a client last week. It happened on her iMac (10.5.8) and on her MBPro (10.6.2) after I installed Quark 8.12 from the upgrade DVD. Drove me nuts. Finally, after reading everything I could find about the problem and trying the solutions that made the most sense without success, I pulled all of the extensions from the Quark folder. Quark launched with out an issue on both computers. I dropped half of the extensions back in and Quark crashed. On a hunch I pulled the Extensis XT7 extension and it worked without issue. I put the rest of the extensions back in and all was good. For fun I dropped the XT6 extension in (client is using suitcase X1) and Quark crashed big and ugly. Quark is running just fine without either the XT6 or XT7 extensions. Hope this helps.

I'm having the same problem as above. New iMac, everything works but Quark. It has accepted my validation #, but when I try to launch it freezes. They've given me a temporary validation number, it won't work either. Waiting for help with that now.

But what I do have happening that no one else has mentioned is when I try more than once to launch Quark I get a descending transparent red curtain that totally freezes the computer when it reaches the bottom of the screen. Any ideas on that?

sk1975 wrote:
GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYONE!!!!

Here was what was told to me by a Senior Product Manager at Quark…

I doubt it is something “wrong” with your Apple hardware. We noticed that on a few new Macs some Firewire devices return a negative number where we expect a zero or positive value. We will have a patch soon, until then you cannot activate QuarkXPress on these models with these devices.

Here is the patch they came out with…

Quark XPress 8.15 - I installed this patch today (1/7/10) and was able to activate the software with no issues

I am currently running the software as we speak and so far so good… everything is running great!

sk1975

Where did you get the 8.15 patch? It isn't listed on the QXP site.

Thanks

Hi all,

please allow me to clarify what is happening:

After a fresh install of QuarkXPress unfortunately on some newer Mac models QuarkXPress crashes when trying to activate it. This only happens on models which have Firewire ports with an address that begins with a non-zero value and only when activating. It has nothing to do with Snow Leopard per se, although all affected computers seem to come pre-installed with Snow Leopard.

A workaround is to not activate QuarkXPress, which will continue to function for 30 days (if not activated).

The good news are that we know now exactly what's causing it and have created a fix which we are currently testing with a few effected customers. Once they all confirm it fixing the issue we will post it on our website. We expect this to happen within the next two weeks and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

To confirm whether you have an affected computer you can follow these steps:
1. Select About This Mac from the Apple menu
2. Click More Info
3. Select File > Save As and save it somewhere
4. Open this file in a text editor like TextEdit
5. Do a Find for the string "class IOFireWireIP"
6. Under that section there will be a line that begins with "IOMACAddress" and has a string of letters and numbers that begins and ends with a semicolon. If that string begins with a value other than zero then you have an affected computer.

If you want to comment or find more info, please see http://forums.quark.com/t/22416.aspx?PageIndex=2#91154

Best regards

Matthias Guenther
Senior Product Manager
Quark Inc.

QuarkXPress 8.15 is now available:
http://bit.ly/QXP815

Best regards
Matthias