How to uninstall Safari and reinstall clean copy

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Level 1

23 points

How to uninstall Safari and reinstall clean copy

MacBook Pro Retina, macOS Sierra 10.12.5 and latest Browsers, all apps up to date. I use anti-viral and adware removal programs.

Google chrome changed search engine to google.com.hk about a week ago after using VPN going via Shanghai. Now all my browsers use google search hk in Mandarin. Google has been absolutely no help (there are others with same and similar problems). Unfortunately all google documents I have use in Safari for years are now also in Mandarin (can't speak or read it).

I uninstalled all browsers, cleaned library of anything google, to no avail. I was unable to uninstall Safari, was told this was "forbidden" as Safari was part of op sys. The problem appears to be the google:baseURL. In the meantime I changed all my search engines to others than Google.

Is there a Mac genius who could tell me how to uninstall Safari v. 10.1.1 and reinstall a clean copy so I can access my google docs in English?

Thanks,

im

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on May 22, 2017 8:24 PM

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Answer 1

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imyoung Author

Level 1

23 points

May 23, 2017 9:52 PM in response to Eric Root

@ Eric Root,

Your recommendation to try macOS Sierra 10.12.5 Combo did the trick (download time 2h 10 min!). Thank God I don’t have to do the time consuming recovery

Have been travelling for 10 months, using WiFi (slow) and VPN making it even slower (switching to various international locations). It has never been a problem up to now but I will keep your instructions just in case google messes up my system again.

Thanks a bunch for saving me a lot of time.

Best,

im

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

May 23, 2017 11:11 AM in response to imyoung

You would need to reinstall the OS to get a clean copy.

Try running the combo update. It installs all previous updates plus the new one, which can replace any files that may have become corrupted.

macOS Sierra 10.12.5 Combo

If that doesn't work, do a backup, preferable 2 separate ones on 2 drives. Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during a restart) and select Recovery Volume. Run Disk Utility and select First Aid. Then re-install the OS.

OS X Recovery

OS X Recovery (2)

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Answer 3

May 23, 2017 9:40 PM in response to imyoung

My suggestion is to uninstall the anti-viral software first and see if that clears up any problems for you.

Anti-viral software is not needed on a Mac. It generally causes far more problems then it does in the way of good.

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Answer 4

imyoung Author

Level 1

23 points

May 23, 2017 9:57 PM in response to Allan Eckert

@ Allan Eckert,

Have used Avira antiviral SW for about 3 years. So far it has never caused any problems. When installing SW it turns off automatically after administrator sign in. Will keep your suggestion in mind in case google search acts up again.

im

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Answer 5

May 24, 2017 9:59 AM in response to imyoung

Consider yourself extremely lucky.

So far it has been my experience when called in to help solve performance problems on Macs, when I discover any AV software install the uninstalling of it solved the performance problems.

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