Preview crashes every time after upgrading to Lion

this is what is happening to me also, it says "fetching" for the new user. i created a new user and preview worked for that user but not for my original user. 😟

Hello imacanyone,

If you made a new user with admin rights, you can still change the permissions for your old user and Preview should work for that user. Unless your just as happy using the new user. LOL

finally made a new user "root user" and gave it read/write rights but still not working. talked to Apple on the phone and they are not "aware" of any problems with Preview. they suggested a clean install. the problem with using a new user is all my "stuff" is gone. Its all on with my old user. maybe i'm just missing something but this is so aggrevating !!!

Spent l o n g time yesterday with apple support. The whole idea of Apple not being "aware" of the problem is insane, making a google search on crash + lion + preview will get something like 40 million hits.

I have gone through most of the advices found here and on other sites and neither me nor some of my friends with long *nix experience understand the problem. Restoring the read/write rights is obviously not the problem.

And I must admit that I was silly, installing a new OS version when it is published, isn't that basically an extremely bad idea...

Problem now solved. I don't know if my problem was different than other's or only solved in a different manner:

1. Create new user and log on to this.

2. Use Preview and TextEdit to get files created.

3. Find and get ~/Library/Container directory and copy this directly to HD.

4. Log out and into ordinary user.

5. Find Container directory from HD and move this to ~/Library/Container (which did not exist)

Moving across different logins required some manipulations which I do not remember exactly, and I also had to authenticate to write into ~/Library.

Why the Container directory was missing since I installed Lion remains completely unknown to me, although an engineer, I have stayed away of any terminal Unix manipulations. I am using Dropbox, this has been mentioned and it just might add to the soup...

So everything works now and I am slowly learning to scroll the other way around. It actually makes sense moving the surface rather than the cursor.

YOU ARE THE MAN !!!!! it worked. thanks so much

jim

iMacanyone,

Is this what worked for you?

Re: Preview crashes every time after upgrading to Lion

Jul 27, 2011 11:58 PM ( in response to Anders Jangö)

Problem now solved. I don't know if my problem was different than other's or only solved in a different manner:

1. Create new user and log on to this.

2. Use Preview and TextEdit to get files created.

3. Find and get ~/Library/Container directory and copy this directly to HD.

4. Log out and into ordinary user.

5. Find Container directory from HD and move this to ~/Library/Container (which did not exist)

Moving across different logins required some manipulations which I do not remember exactly, and I also had to authenticate to write into ~/Library.

Why the Container directory was missing since I installed Lion remains completely unknown to me, although an engineer, I have stayed away of any terminal Unix manipulations. I am using Dropbox, this has been mentioned and it just might add to the soup...

So everything works now and I am slowly learning to scroll the other way around. It actually makes sense moving the surface rather than the cursor.

I am just curious, as this would better help trouble shoot the problem.

I hang out for a hour with the german Apple support. I deleted the symlinks for the documents and the downloads folders after making a copy of them. Then I created new "direct" and empty documents and downloads folders.

And preview started again.

I created the symlinks before upgrading to Lion because of my iMac configuration with a ssd and a hdd.

Silvertoe,

yes what Anders posted worked for me.

jim

I have done as you instructed to both "library' folders I found, the system/library folder and what I presume is the root library folder off the hard drive. This hasn't resovled my preview crashes.

Well, I am not really experienced in Unix, but I think not. On my computer there is no Container directory under System/Library and the Container directory directly on the root of the HD is there only beacause that is the way I moved it from the other user.

The TextEdit and PreView directories should be visible in the user/Library/Container directory, in my case:

anders/Library/Container/com.apple.Preview

and

anders/library/Container/com.apple.TextEdit

Both these directories contain a file "Container.plist" and a subdirectory "Data", further containing various directories.

You are aware that "Library" is hidden in LIon, You could access this directory via Finder/Go, pressing alt key.

I used Anders + Silvertoes solution and now, at last it works!

Thank you!

epchaves wrote:

Hi folks.

I've found the error. The crash was ocurring because my ~/Downloads folder is a symlink to a second HD. In order to fix i have removed the symlink, ran preview app and then re-created the symlink. This fixex everything.

Cheers

This worked for me. Deleted the symlinks and then re-created them and voila.

I had Desktop, Documents and Pictures symlinked.

There is a definite issue with network accounts in Lion Server. A new user created in the local directory has no problems firing up Preview & TextEdit. The ~/Library/Containers directory gets set up. In a new network account, the ~/Library/Containers directory does not get set up when Preview is first launched. So I can recreate the problem. Copying across the ~/Library/Containers directory from a working local account to a network account (and changing ownership) does not resolve the problem. I can follow the logic of the recommendations but Preview is still generating the same error message.

What should the permissions really look like? Mine looks like this:

drwx------ 4 gt staff 136 3 Aug 09:56 Containers

Glad that's figured out!

There is a handy little utility called Houdini 1.0 that allows you to toggle between reveal and hide on these pesky hidden folders.

I wondered what happened to the ~/Library folder.

Now to get my fonts working right again.

Bye