iPhoto '11 Major Problems

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Level 1

12 points

iPhoto '11 Major Problems

Hello,

There are major problems in the new iPhoto '11 and I am wondering if anyone is having the problems listed below.

Every time I open iPhoto 11 it wants to upgrade the photo library. I let it, check around iPhoto and look at pictures, and quit iPhoto and it saves the library all 25000 pictures. So I open iPhoto again and it is asking to upgrade the photo library AGAIN. And it repeats every time I open iPhoto.

I also noticed this on other apps such as iMovie and Garageband. iMovie will upgrade all movies made on iMovie, and Garageband scans for Jam mixes every time I open the apps. After quitting iPhoto, iMovie, or Garageband it seems like it never saves changes. I have not tried iWeb or iDVD yet to see if the problem affects those apps aswell.

This is the first time I am angry at Apple for selling software for $50 when it doesn't even work properly.

I have a feeling that it has something to do with Time Machine backups, because after upgrading my library it started backing up all 120GB of photos again.

I have also heard cases of other people loosing photos, thank god I have a back up, all 120GB of it.

Please Apple release a fix ASAP!!!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 22, 2010 5:43 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Amilmar

Level 1

5 points

Oct 22, 2010 6:54 PM in response to chester4444

Sounds like a permissions problem to me.

Try launching iPhoto with alt and cmd keys down, and choose to repair iPhoto’s database persmissions (you can also rebuild few other things)

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Answer 2

Oct 22, 2010 6:57 PM in response to chester4444

Every time I open iPhoto 11 it wants to upgrade the photo library. I let it, check around
iPhoto and look at pictures, and quit iPhoto and it saves the library all 25000 pictures.
So I open iPhoto again and it is asking to upgrade the photo library AGAIN.
And it repeats every time I open iPhoto.

I seems to me as if you have a corrupted iPhoto library. Not bad enough to stop it working in iPhoto 9 but bad enough to cause an upgrade problem.

FWIW I had a corrupted iTunes library that didn't stop iTunes working but every 2nd time I connected my iPod classic it would claim that the iPod library was corrupted. Connect the iPod to a different Mac then back to the first and iTunes was happy for 1 sync -(: go figure.

I have a feeling that it has something to do with Time Machine backups,
because after upgrading my library it started backing up all 120GB of photos again.

I am waiting for Time machine to let me know about the backup size, but would not be surprised if it backed up the complete iPhoto library again.

Just think how difficult it would be to restore from 2 different library versions.
You usually just modify a single library version so then just the change make sense but after a major upgrade of the library version a new backup makes sense to me.

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Answer 3

chester4444 Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 22, 2010 7:00 PM in response to SometimeWoodWorker

I will try repairing the library and report back to tell what happened.

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Answer 4

Oct 22, 2010 8:07 PM in response to SometimeWoodWorker

I am waiting for Time machine to let me know about the backup size, but would not be surprised if it backed up the complete iPhoto library again.

Time machine has jus finished a full backup of my updated iPhoto library then its next backup was small. so it looks as if my guess was right

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Answer 5

chester4444 Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 23, 2010 6:08 AM in response to chester4444

I tried repairing permissions and rebuilding the library once again and now all my events and just black squares with black white outlined place holders in them!

Are my photos gone?!

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Answer 6

Rhainman

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2010 6:37 AM in response to chester4444

Likewise...

I ran the upgrade, started iPhoto and encountered the same problems as others have noted concerning the spinning beach ball of death whilst upgrading the library.
After reading everyone else's horror stories, I re-booted in Safe Mode and repaired my disk permissions.
I then opened iPhoto and this time it went right through the upgrading process but now I have the event tiles with titles, even saying how many photo's are inside each event, but they event tiles are blank and there are no pictures to be seen anywhere.
On checking the size of the library I see it is now only 14.36Gb when it was previously 49.78Gb.

This is singularly the most botched up diabolical screw-upgrade I have ever had with Apple software, and I have been using Macs since 1989, I am praying they can get a fix out ASAP. As thing s stand I have also encountered the same problem on one of my iMacs, thankfully I have a backup of the library on another external drive but only up to 22nd September. Again thankfully I have all the remaining pictures on camera's, iPhones etc. that I can retrieve from as well but I am extraordinarily cheesed-off with this.

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Answer 7

chester4444 Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 23, 2010 6:09 PM in response to Rhainman

My iPhoto library had deleted itself it seems down to only 14GB, I restored the whole library from a Time Machine backup, after 6 hours it finally got all the 106 GB of photos back on my mac. I opened iPhoto back up and wanted to upgrade the photo library and I let it. It upgraded in about 30 minutes. I looked around iPhoto and all photos were there and I closed it and it saved all the photos which took another 15 minutes and it closed iPhoto when done. I reopened it AFTER disabling custom fonts in the fontbook, and yet again iPhoto wanted to upgrade my library again!!!!!!

This is terrible. I am next going to try reinstalling iLife '11 and see if it was a bad install in the first place. I tried rebuilding the library multiple times which in the end destroyed my entire library. I tried repairing permissions, I tried restoring my iPhoto library from a backup. NOTHING IS WORKING!!!

I will report back after I reinstall iLife '11

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Answer 8

chester4444 Author

Level 1

12 points

Oct 23, 2010 8:57 PM in response to chester4444

I reinstalled just iPhoto '11 from the iLife disk and upgraded the library and it had no effect. It still wants to upgrade the library again after opening it time after time.

I did notice a large iPhoto and iPhoto library folder in my trash. I didn't put it there but my original iPhoto library was still in its location...?

I have no idea anymore, tried everything!

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Answer 9

Oct 24, 2010 11:58 PM in response to chester4444

****!!!!!
I did not notice any particular problem in my library, but how to be sure nothing was lost?

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Answer 10

Oct 25, 2010 2:41 AM in response to chester4444

I really need help here. I purchased iLife just now and was upgrading the Iphoto library. The progress took a long time and I was forced to force quit the process. Then, i reopen the app and all the upgrade went smoothly, until after the process, ALL THE PHOTOS WAS GONE!!! I opened the iPhoto library package content and found no photos in it. I assumed the upgrading process has deleted the photos and all the media, so, I immediately ran the Data Rescue 3 program to try to recover all the media. (i have no way to backup my photos, there are just too many). It worked. Now, I think I have everything back, but it is still a mess, with millions of photos arranged randomly. I will take me forever to organize them back. Even though, i would like to ask is there a way to retrieve the previous library with all the photos in it. I heard that I can mess with some sort of pref file or so... No too sure... I REALLY NEED HELP. Thanks.

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Answer 11

LizCastro

Level 1

104 points

Oct 25, 2010 3:02 AM in response to tszheichoi

This is so not right. Happened to me, but I had a backup. Please spread the word that a backup is absolutely essential and even then I've spent countless hours going back and forth. Just restoring the backup takes more than 2 hours.

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Answer 12

Oct 25, 2010 12:41 PM in response to tszheichoi

tszheichoi wrote:
(i have no way to backup my photos, there are just too many)

Yes you do. Add another hard drive.

It stinks that you lost your photos, but you have to consider the possibility that ANY data that is not backed up can be lost at any time. Time Machine or something similar that backs up on a regular basis is a good idea as well as regularly copying all your files to something external and storing it offsite.

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Answer 13

Oct 25, 2010 3:14 PM in response to chester4444

I'm having a different problem. My iPhoto '09 wasn't working after a Genius worked on my computer. So the Genius installed '11 as a "favor" (they couldn't fix what they had messed up.)
But '11 does not permit you either to name or to split photos that are being imported as you could under '09.
We tried every setting and preference and could not find a way to make the import function work as it did before. The only thing you can do is go into Events and then start dragging photos into the right Event, which is not only more tedious and time-consuming, but leads to more errors.
Has anyone found a way to fix this? APPLE: why did you change this? Last import window worked beautifully before and now it's a useless mess!

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Answer 14

Oct 25, 2010 4:45 PM in response to Mike Connelly

I totally agree with you. After this, I will purchase a Time Machine, no matter how much it cost. But for this occasion, Data Rescue 3 helped my a lot.

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Answer 15

Oct 26, 2010 12:07 PM in response to chester4444

I installed iLife 11 and iPhoto updated the Library. Everything looked fine. Then, I imported pictures from an SD card and it looked like they imported just fine. I changed the title of the event (not as easy as it was) and everything looked normal. After import, I said "don't keep photos on card" and it deleted them. After closing iPhoto and opening later, all of the imported pics were gone! No event! No pics! Nothing!

In Finder, I saw the thumbnails only and I think the originals are long gone. I cannot believe this. Something is seriously wrong with this new version. Apple has to know about this and let us know how to fix right away.

Did Apple actually test this software before releasing it? From the number, and severity of the problems on these forums, I doubt it.

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