Preview won't open - M1 MacBook Pro 14-in 2021

Preview won't open - M1 MacBook Pro 14-in… - Apple Community

This is follow-up to the thread with the welcome suggestions proffered by P. Phillips Level 9, and tried by me, in my issue where my shiny M1 MacBook Pro 14-inch Monterey was having issues - in particular, Preview would not open, which handicapped me a lot.

The advice was eventually to use EtreCheck to survey my installation, and I embraced that FREE software to provide a list for my mentor: several of the aspects raised by EtreCheck were perhaps vulnerabilities, and I took the advice and addressed many of them. I also paid for the extended edition - this software is a valuable insight into my laptop. Things such as older 32-bit files, applications that were unused, detritus from 9 years with Macs and previous MacBook Pro usage. I took the chance to

• delete redundant files
• re-install the operating system, but this did not solve the problem.
• re-install the OS, overwrite everything from backup, which did not solve the issue
• re-install the OS, restore from backup everything except Applications, which I downloaded from

online to install again. Same.

The problem was still extant. Other issues were now surfacing. Thunderbird was downloading each email again every 10 minutes. Open Office and Libre Office failed to open. iCloud wouldn't synchronise Photos. Nothing would print. Couldn't reliably network with my Mac Pro. Bear in mind that each of these re-installs can take a whole day, and I've other things to do besides signing out of iCloud and two-factor-authenticating everything to get back in again. Were cosmic rays or random magnetization or unknown malware loose inside my laptop?

So eventually I realised it was necessary to erase the whole disk. Everything. Then restore Monterey as if it were a new computer. Gulp. Did it. Amazed to discover that at this stage, Preview now worked!

I tentatively used FileVault to encrypt. Then I restored only my data files from backup, no applications or library files. I downloaded apps only from online - major trawl needed here for forgotten licence keys and account IDs and passwords.

Basically, though, the problem seems solved - Preview still works - and the other issues are gone too, so I give many thanks to support from P. Phillips Level 9, from EtreCheck, and from Apple HOWTOs on Recovery and Migration Assistant, plus the excellent TimeMachine backup system and my networked Apple Airport Time Capsule. (How can anyone manage without a backup?)

It's taken about 2 months of intermittent complex maintenance, during which I was barely able to use the laptop, and i've only just regained a fully working MacBook Pro again.

No idea of what caused the issues noticed, but that's software - and I'm still coming across the need for apps that I thought were already here and realise aren't yet re-installed!

The next move if there's a recurrence will be to just take the machine back to Apple. This deep-brain surgery is defintitely beyond the remit of we normal users. Hope this tale helps others.