Programs bounce in dock but do not open- HELP

Question

Programs bounce in dock but do not open- HELP

Thanks in advance for any help.
My problem is that several programs refuse to open up. My VLC player, as well as all components of Microsoft Office, when clicked in the dock, the icon bounces, and then stops- without opening the program. I need to know how to fix this as I use Word everyday and am having trouble without it.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Aug 22, 2006 1:16 PM

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Answer 1

Hex50

Level 2

340 points

Aug 22, 2006 1:39 PM in response to televisionsavant

I had the same problem yesterday with one of my programs that usually never gives me any trouble. I repaired permissions under Disk Utility, and shut the comp down and restarted. Now it is working fine, that's the simplest thing you can try.

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Answer 2

Aug 22, 2006 2:07 PM in response to Hex50

Already tried repairing permissions and it did not work. Both programs still won't open up at all.

Any other solutions?

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Answer 3

Hex50

Level 2

340 points

Aug 22, 2006 2:19 PM in response to televisionsavant

Maybe call Apple Care and see what they have to say. It might be something simple or you may need to reinstall the program.

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Answer 4

Aug 22, 2006 6:24 PM in response to Hex50

Does anyone else have any helpful suggestions on how to solve my problem? Any help would be appreciated.

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Answer 5

Aug 22, 2006 6:37 PM in response to televisionsavant

This usually happens when applications are not correctily installed in the system (or are not anymore correctily etc)

Did you try to run Word or Vlc not from the dock but browsing the application folder? If that's ok, try to remove icons from the dock and then add them again. Either, try to re-install Office and Vlc.

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Answer 6

Aug 22, 2006 6:44 PM in response to televisionsavant

Did you try the other half of Hex50's recommendation?

Seriously, a restart can sometimes clear out the cobwebs, when behavior gets flaky.

You didn't say hom much RAM you have. The MS Office programs require Rosetta to run, and so take more memory than they would require on a PPC Mac. If you have only 512 MB RAM, for example, expect very slow behavior with Word.

One question: Have you recently had a power outage or a forced shutdown? If so, run Disk Utility and verify disk, to make sure you don't have a damaged disk directory.

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Answer 7

DanMartin

Level 2

466 points

Aug 22, 2006 6:59 PM in response to televisionsavant

Have you tried trashing com.microsoft.Word.prefs and com.microsoft.Office.prefs in User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft and then restarting your computer?

Cheers

Daniel

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Answer 8

Aug 22, 2006 7:11 PM in response to Bill DeVille

Yes, I have tried running Word from the application browser rather than from the dock, no luck. Yes, I have verified that the drive is healthy and that it needs to repairs. I have a 1GB RAM. Tried restart, no luck.

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Answer 9

Aug 23, 2006 1:56 PM in response to DanMartin

I have tried reinstalling VLC, and to no avail. Problem is still existant. And I don't own the copy of Microsoft Office, I used a family members CD keys, so I can't really uninstall and reinstall that- but apparently that won't help my problem. Anyone else with any suggestions?

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Answer 10

Aug 23, 2006 2:05 PM in response to televisionsavant

I had the same issue with Microsoft Office 2004 (all applications), a simple log out and log back in solved it. The simplest option if doing that and a restart doesn't work, well, then a reinstall of the software and/or OS X. Meep.

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Answer 11

DanMartin

Level 2

466 points

Aug 23, 2006 2:09 PM in response to Carlos G.

Have you tried trashing com.microsoft.Word.prefs and com.microsoft.Office.prefs in User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft and then restarting your computer?

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Answer 12

Aug 23, 2006 2:13 PM in response to DanMartin

I have tried logging out/in and restarting, no luck. Have also tried deleting the pref files and then restarting. No luck.

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Answer 13

Aug 23, 2006 3:19 PM in response to televisionsavant

By any chance have you used a utility to remove unneeded languages from your System?

I've seen previous posts on the forum that noted that if this isn't done with caution, code can be removed that makes Rosetta inoperable. In other words, PPC apps could no longer be launched. The solution would be a System Archive and Install.

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Answer 14

Aug 23, 2006 5:04 PM in response to Bill DeVille

Yes, I did use a utility to remove languages from my system. I used monolingual. However, it was working for a couple days after. But this makes complete sense because I ran monolingual about a week and a half ago and since have noticed the problem, also Office and VLC are the only two programs on my macbookpro that are powerpc. Thank you figuring out the cause of my problem! I visited the VideoLan site and downloaded the intel version of VLC, and it is now running perfectly. However, what can I do about my Microsoft Office suite and the Rosetta translation? How exactly do I do a System Archive and Install, is there another way?

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Answer 15

Aug 23, 2006 5:12 PM in response to televisionsavant

create another user account and see if it works there..... it may be some prefs in your user that won't allow them to open....

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