Launchd trying to start a daemon that doesn't exist. How to stop it?

For the last several months my computer has been locking up (hard hang requiring cold boot) at random intervals. I didn't have time to deal with troubleshooting it until now. I began my troubleshooting with looking at Console. I'm getting repeating messages about launchd trying to run com.google.keystone.daemon. Each time it exits with code 1 and then tries again 10 seconds later. I need to resolve this to see if it fixes my lock-up problem or at least to be able to view what else is going on in the Console without the constant Google Software Update spam.

The file that is trying to launch is //Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/MacO S/GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon. However, this file does not exist. There is only one subdirectory under //Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate called /TicketStore.

If I execute 'launchctl list | grep google' I get '- 1 com.google.keystone.daemon' as a result, but if I try to remove it using 'launchctl unload com.google.keystone.daemon' I get "nothing found to unload".

I know that this daemon is because of Google software. I tried uninstalling Google Software Update using the instructions on Google's site, but the necessary program didn't exist. I tried removing Google Earth and Picasa (the only Google software I have, to my knowledge), but launchd still tries to run the daemon. I tried reinstalling Google Earth and Picasa so that I could uninstall them or kill the daemon, but even after reinstalling there is no GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle in the specified location.

I've looked in //Library/LaunchDaemons/ and /Library/LaunchAgents/ and com.google.keystone.daemon doesn't exist in either one.

What do I need to do to stop launchd from constantly trying to execute a daemon that doesn't exist?

MacBook Pro 15" (2008), Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Apr 15, 2011 9:54 AM

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3 replies

Apr 15, 2011 10:08 AM in response to CueBall909

Well, I'm not sure what I did, but I was going through all my steps again after posting this question and after one last reboot the GoogleUpdate daemon is no longer spamming the console. Not sure what is different now than before, and I rebooted at least a dozen times when trying to diagnose this, but the daemon is no longer running. Really wish I knew what the magic bullet was, but at least it's fixed (for now, at least).

Now I can continue to troubleshoot my lock-up issue.

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Launchd trying to start a daemon that doesn't exist. How to stop it?

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