Where's a magician when you really need one?

Recently did a re-install of 10.3.9, but now it's not much fun because Sherlock doesn't work.

No matter what I enter into the search field, the response of "no results found" stays there. It's almost as though it loads the internet, but can't access information or something prevents it from searching. All the other channels do the same thing.

Been through the discussion posts and tried deleting various files to no avail.

Can anyone please suggest something that will work?

G4 Titanium Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Dec 19, 2005 4:11 PM

19 replies

TildeBee

Level 7

31,923 points

Dec 22, 2005 7:24 PM in response to Rich JG

Iconophile & Rich --

From my experience here, once a Mac user has run any Norton
apps, let alone two, really all bets are off.

Personally, losing Sherlock would not be a large problem for me,
but having my directory messed up would be.

Logs from a directory that has been damaged by Norton
do not make any sense . . . you can't pinpoint the culprit . . .
Lots of seemingly unrelated errors. Rich, if you really want to
replicate Iconophile's log, install two Nortons. (I am not trying to
be a wiseguy, but I'm afraid that's the only way you're going to
replicate his problems.)

Iconphile -- I apologize, the fact that you're on Panther
(which I loved) escaped me. Your "find" should be fine.

In order to be able to really troubleshoot the problem here
you NEED to UNinstall Norton. Then, we can deal with
a Mac reality.

🙂

Dec 22, 2005 8:26 PM in response to Rich JG

Wish I had something useful to say, but I don't.

Arghh...

My guess is that the messages from
Sherlock mean that it is trying to digest data that
it does not recognize, which might be a symptom
rather than a cause of the prpblem.

I agree. Since re-installing Sherlock, the problem persists.

A question: do I properly understand one of your
comments - that the magnifying glass simply does not
show up any more?

Correct.

Also, have you been seeing the spinner at the right of the screen when you > try to do a search?

No, it's dead centre in the Sherlock window.

Also, you said that you deleted a bunch of files. I
suppose one of them was
/Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Sherlock
.plist, but it is time to ask to make sure.

Yes, I've done that. Several times.

A couple of more standard
troubleshooting chores would be to repair permissions
on your disk and to clean out the system caches with
something like Panther Cache Cleaner.

I'll try that. Where can I find it to download?

I appreciate you wracking your brains over this. Clearly, you're better versed in systems work than I... just so ****** infuriating. While I'd like to get it working, I'm not keen on doing a full install again.

Dec 22, 2005 8:40 PM in response to TildeBee

Iconophile & Rich --

From my experience here, once a Mac user has run any
Norton apps, let alone two, really all bets are off.

Yeah, I guess Apple thinks we're just supposed to be born with this knowledge

Personally, losing Sherlock would not be a large
problem for me,
but having my directory messed up would be.

I'm with you, there.

Iconphile -- I apologize, the fact that you're on
Panther (which I loved) escaped me. Your "find" should be
fine.

No worries. Your input on the problem is appreciated.

In order to be able to really troubleshoot the
problem here
you NEED to UNinstall Norton. Then, we can deal
with
a Mac reality.

I've just run the Norton UNinstall app, but it shows no items to uninstall; just a blank window under the instruction "select which items you'd like to Uninstall".
A command-f search finds no Norton or Symantec products anywhere.

[sigh]

Maybe I should just give up. ;(

Rich JG

Level 5

4,445 points

Dec 23, 2005 6:19 PM in response to iconophile-ltd

Iconophile and Bee,

After these discussions and the suspicions about damage to the directory structure by Norton, it seems like the best hope is to re-format the disk and do another re-install. However, there is one thing about this scenario that I am unsure of and perhaps you know the answer, Bee. If the directory structure was damaged prior to the re-install, I would naively expect that the re-install would fix things up. But, in fact, I suppose that parts of the previous directory catalog can still remain on the computer and potentially cause problems after a re-install. Bee, is this what you mean by "remnants left over from the clean install"? This is not a subject that I know very much about. I have personally never had problems of this sort but I do see that some people need to re-format to solve their software problems.

If a re-install seems like the way to go, my suggestions would be to:
- If you have anything that needs to be backed up, do that.
- Re-format the hard drive and use the option to write zeros to the disk
- Use Disk Utility to verify that the filesystem appears to be okay
- If the filesystem checks out, install Panther from the cds
- Prior to doing any upgrading, check to make sure that Sherlock works. If it does not work, then I would conclude that there is some subtle problem with the internet connection. If Sherlock fails to work, I think the possible causes have been narrowed down a lot, and I would try to isolate the problem at this point.
- Also make sure that Safari works
- If Safari and Sherlock work, proceed to bring the system up to 10.3.9. The best way to do this is to use the 10.3.9 Combo Updater which contains all of the updates going from 10.3.1 to 10.3.9.
- After doing this, test again to make sure that Sherlock and Safari work
- If they work, I would suggest that you use Software Update to do the remaining updates or I can give you a list of the updates that are needed and the order that they were installed on my computer.
- After each update, continue to check Safari and Sherlock

If you follow this procedure, your Safari will be at version 1.3. Even though you are concerned that 1.3 might have caused some of your trouble, I would stick with this for a while. My opinion is that your original problems were not specifically due to the version of Safari.

If this is a plan that you are interested in, Kappy gives nice instructions for reformatting a drive. For instance, see his post from Oct 17.

Rich

EMAC G4 1.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Where's a magician when you really need one?