Preview Crashes at Launch

Anast,

If you can open the Terminal app and then paste this command, it will show you if there are any symbolic links in your home directory. (But if you don't know how to create them I doubt you have any)

ls -l $HOME | grep ^l

For example, on my system Downloads is a symblic link and the command returns this output:

lrwxr-xr-x 1 user user 30 Jul 20 13:36 Downloads -> /Volumes/Ext Mac HD/Downloads/

Bunch of thanks, removing all my sym-links fixed the Textedit problem and it's not hard to put the links back afterwards.

Was using Lion retail version.

If you go to "About this Mac" in the Apple pull down menu and then click on "More Info..." if you've got the just released "Gold Master" version of Lion it should say "Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (11A511)".

have the same issue. iMac with SSD & standard HD.

removing all the symlinks that were in my home folder didn't fix the issue with preview.

I have used the advanced options (system preferences -> users and groups) to setup my home folder on the second HD. therefore there is a symlink in the Users folder of the System HD that points to my actual home folder on the other disk. This one can't be removed of course :-/ bad bad bug in Lion...

Anyway, I'll try moving my home filder to the same HD as Mac OS and remove the symlink just to see if this fixes the bug.

One minor detail that I overlooked for a little bit was that you had to launch the program after removing the symlinks before reforming them. I think I might have rebooted (or at least logged out) after removing them before trying to relaunch. The OS rebuilt the home folders, at which point all of the software worked. I was then able to reform the links, and the software still works.

that does solve the issue. so, the home folder on a separate disk is not a good idea with Lion, unless you don't use preview and textedit.

The following command will show you every symbolic link in your home directory that points to a directory.

find ~ -type l -print0 | xargs -0 file -L | grep directory | sed 's-:.*$--'

This may take anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes to complete, on average. Longer if you have many files. Also be aware that it will probably show you quite a few links. The majority of them will not be the one that causes the issue. Deleting any one of them could cause something else to stop working. Choose carefully. If you're not sure, ask us.

Handy cmd, but it might be a bit daunting for some. On my system which is working fine now, I've got 974 symbolic links that point to directories. Nearly all of those are in ~/Library so if they add a grep to weed those out it might help them find a likely culprit. Althougth someone else where said that "~/Library/Mail Downloads" was the problematic link for them.

find ~ -type l -print0 | xargs -0 file -L | grep directory | sed 's-:.*$--' | grep -v "/Library/"

Here's my easy fix, based largely on the good ideas above, but without any Terminal shenanigans...

Like the posters above, I have symlinks on my SSD pointing to a 2nd HDD for several folders. It seems to be just the Downloads folder that upsets Textedit and Preview. I had set up the symlinks using a service free plugin called 'Symbolic Linker'. Search macupdate.com or versiontracker.com for this as it makes creating symlinks really easy (right click on the item in the finder and select from the service list). Here's what I did to fix the problem:

- Deleted the Download folder symbolic link.

- Opened Preview and Textedit. Then closed them both.

- Create a new symbolic link (see tip above) for my Downloads folder (replacing the one that was created automatically).

- Preview and Textedit should open now.

Hi, I also have this issue. I just post to contribute as I know this isn't my topic. But I use those apps excesively untill Lion because neither has ever run on any of the primary accounts. I tried the link thing. Got rid of all of them in a weeding fasion. Didn't need them anyway. But now I have none and the issue remains.

Just to add though they run on one of the account on the iMac. It happens to be the newest. So I tried creating a new account and they work fine there also.

I tried removing any and all related User Library files with no change.

So my issue isn't link related but rather related to something older than the newest account. I make the assumption I will find the issue in the User Libraries somewhere. Or something that is being started up at log-in that's not in use with the newest account. We don't have much at all that's not used everywhere, and I only have 3 user startups anyway. Perhaps something the OS is starting for our acounts and not the new one/s. Not sure how to work that out without capturing the Activity list and doing a straight comparison.

For me:

step 1. try it on all accounts. Done, they work only on the newest one.

step 2. create a new account. Done, they work on the new acount.

step 3. delete prefs etc. Done, no change.

step 4. delete all links from user. Done, no change.

step 5. remove entire user lib (temporarily).

step 6. try locating and removing finder/sidebar related prefs etc.

step 7. manually migrate.

Only thing of interest that could be related to links, but doesn't show up in the link search is way back I put a link to a network HDD that has since lost resolve. I added that link to the user sidebar. The original directory I liked to and the link have long since been deleted. But no matter how many times I try to remove it from the sidebar, it reapears. Not sure if this is related but I keep haveing to turn off All My Files and that keeps reapearing also. And Air Drop keeps putting itself back at the top.

This being the potensial problem I can't work out where that data might be stored. Some OS preference?

osihara, could you copy the technical information from the crash reporter window, paste it to a website like Pastebin.com and link to it here? If I remember correctly, the error log from the crash reporter mentions the offending path.

Sorry for not getting back to you on this.

I have resolved my issue by re-migrating the users. Used Time-Machine to do it and all seems ok now. I have put some real thought into why those two accounts are different. I suspect a few causes, but I think the most likly cause was way back I changed the account names for both of those accounts. By that I mean the unchangable one. I followed a procedure that worked fine, until now it seems.

I did try everithing but is still crashing,this is crash report.Any idea or help please let me know

Process: Preview [415]

Path: /Applications/Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/Preview

Identifier: com.apple.Preview

Version: 5.5 (715)

Build Info: Preview-715000000000000~2

Code Type: X86-64 (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [246]

Date/Time: 2011-08-15 00:49:02.239 -0500

OS Version: Mac OS X Server 10.7 (11A494a)

Report Version: 9

Interval Since Last Report: 38821 sec

Crashes Since Last Report: 13

Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 9

Anonymous UUID: 14BFEC48-7DFA-4B92-B35E-AE04625BBA44

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000

Application Specific Information:

dyld: launch, running initializers

/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

xpchelper reply message validation: sandbox creation failed: 1002

Container object initialization failed: NSCocoaErrorDomain:257 The file “Preferences” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.