My wife's Computer hates Safari

Question

My wife's Computer hates Safari

She upgraded to 10.6 about a month ago and ever since Safari has been acting like a petulent child. It freezes at the homepage, Hotmail, and hold the entire MacBook Pro hostage. I have to powercycle the computer to get back to normal. I've seen a lot of talk about Safari this past year and wanted to know a few things:

Can I roll back to an earlier version to fix this problem?

If not, what steps will correct Safari from freezing the comuter?

If all else fails, how can I force the hardware to accept a 10.5 install disc for re-imaging?

It's a good day in San Francisco.

Hope you're seeing it like I am...

thehighsierras

Safari-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2 GB of memory, Intel processor

Posted on Sep 9, 2011 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 9, 2011 11:44 AM in response to thehighsierras

Please enable guest logins and log in as Guest. Launch Safari and test. Same problems?

After testing, log out of the guest account and disable it if you wish.

Mac OS X 10.6 Help: Creating a guest user account

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Answer 2

Sep 10, 2011 2:07 PM in response to Linc Davis

OK Linc,

I did three things to her MBP last night:

1. Created a new profile with admin rights and switched profiles

2. Ran verify and repair permissions using the Disk Utility

3. Downloaded and reinstalled 10.6.8 Combo Update v1.1

Afer reboot, the system appears better. No more Safari freeze, no more whirring fan, no more computer hangs.

It's only been a day, so i encouraged my wife to kick the tires around all weekend long: download files, watch online embedded videos, send/receive email, facebook...it's her routine, you know, that's how she rolls.

If the problem persists, then I'm going to want to roll her back to 10.5. How do I do that once the original boot firmware has been upgraded? From experience, I know that MBPs don't accept original install disks after upgrading a major OS version release. Do you know how to do it?

Best,

THS

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 10, 2011 2:47 PM in response to thehighsierras

If the problem persists, then I'm going to want to roll her back to 10.5.

Nothing is wrong with Safari in 10.6. Millions of people are using it without the problems you've experienced. If the problem persists, it's because something is wrong with your configuration. The right course of action is to troubleshoot the problem, not to revert the OS. There is no way to revert to 10.5 without losing data, such as the mail database.

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Answer 4

Sep 10, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Linc Davis

Incorrect. A lot of users have reported similar issues.

Check out all this small sample of discussions concerning safari and 10.6:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216267?answerId=16130837022#16130837022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3138015?answerId=15523806022#15523806022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3219403?answerId=15799839022#15799839022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3141753?answerId=15490647022#15490647022

That's a pattern, telling me that Apple released some code that is probably more Lion ready that Snow Leopard compatible.

Whatever lies beneath the surface, I blame apple for unleasing this problem somewhere in the 10.6.8 code.

Back to the original question: How can I roll back or freshly install 10.5 if this Safari problem doesn't go away on 10.6?

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Answer 5

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 10, 2011 3:36 PM in response to thehighsierras

Most software problems reported on this site are caused by defective or incompatible third-party system modifications, which users install themselves, and for which they then blame Apple. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with Safari. I'm using Safari on 10.6.8, and I don't have the same problem as you, so there must be some difference between my setup and yours.

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Answer 6

Sep 11, 2011 1:30 PM in response to Linc Davis

I thought about that. So I checked the Extensions applet within Safari Preferences. Nothing. Literally, nothing installed there by 3rd-party developers. So it's back to the app itself. The OS + Safari 5.1 are simply unstable. There are just too many complaints about Snow Leopard to think this is my problem rather than Apple's. For example...why did iPhoto disappear all of a sudden? Weird, right?

THS

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