Help file won't open

[aslauga]

Just recently I have found that if I open the help file it stays open for a couple of seconds then automatically closes again. If I click on the search box at the top I get the spinning coloured wheel for a couple of seconds more, then it just closes. This is opening the main Finder help. I have tried opening the help files in loads of different applications and they all shut down in various stages. I can't perform any search in help. Any ideas about what I could do to fix it? Or whether it's a virus? I'm on 10.3 Panther iBook G4 and I'm quite new to Macs.

[telecomm]

Sometimes preference files get corrupted, and this is one symptom. You should try deleting the preference files for the help application. In your user folder, go to the preferences folder in your library folder. Once there, you should delete the files that begin com.apple.help... (they'll all end with .plist). I can't remember which exactly is responsible, but you shouldn't run into any trouble deleting them all (I've got three such files in my preferences folder).

When an application starts up and there's no preferences file, it'll just create a fresh one, so this should take care of the problem.

[aslauga]

I've just done that - I only had two - but the problem's still there. Any other ideas?

Thanks

[virividox]

try repair permissions. i never encountered this, but whenever i have funky stuff happening to me i repair right away

[aslauga]

How do I do that? I couldn't search Help to find out!

Thanks

[Cuckoo]

Repair permissions?

Go to applications -> Utilities and fire up 'disk utility' and select the disk you want to repair and click 'repair permissions'

Good luck

[aslauga]

Erm, still no luck!

[telecomm]

Well, in all likelihood a system reinstall would fix the problem, but that's definitely a last resort!

Instead (if you've got either the OS X disks or the single apple DVD that came with your iBook), there might be a way to reinstall just the help application. Here I can't be of much help, but there's a (sharware or freeware - can't remember which) program called Pacifist that some people have had success with.

Instead of doing a full system reinstall, it'll allow you to open the installer package and reinstall only certain components of the operating system. If you do a search in this forum you might have more luck. Pacifist is available to download from a versiontracker.com.

Good luck!