My Help Viewer doesn't work!

[ferrisb]

I just got my new G5 last thursday, and now the help viewer is not working. It just sits there with that rainbow spinny-thing going, and when I open up the activity monitor, the help viewer is taking up 100% of the cpu. Anybody have an idea what's wrong? Is there a way that I can reinstall the help viewer? I looked on Apple's support site, but I couldn't find an answer there. Being a bit of a newbie, I need this thing to work correctly.

Thanks!!

[robbieduncan]

First thing to try (before reinstalling anything) is to:

1) Repair permissions: Open Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. Click on your startup disk on the left the Repair Permissions at the bottom.

2) Trash your help viewer preferences. They are in ~/Library/Preferences (i.e. in the Library in your user account area). The file will be called something like (sorry on a PC at the moment) com.apple.HelpViewer.plist Just drag it to the trash.

[mkrishnan]

More detailed instructions (which mirror Robbie's suggestion):

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/helpviewer.html

[ferrisb]

Thanks - I'll try those when I get home tonight. It's wierd, because it either runs really slow, or not at all. But for some reason the Safari help panel is working fine, but everything else is terrible. I'll try this out an let you guys know.

[Abstract]

Funny thing, mine doesn't either. I just realized it an hour ago. :o

I think it may have to do with the Mac virus scare from several months ago (aka: The Great Scare of 2004!), and we were advised to fiddle with that particular Library file, plus the Help Viewer Application (System>CoreServices>HelpViewer). I remember changing all the associations between the files back, but I guess I fudged up. :(

[stevehaslip]

i had a problem a while ago, my g5's help viewer quit as soon as i opened it. i ended up trashing a preference file or two and then it worked! i looked for the thread but couldn't find it, give it a search here.

[JRam]

I had the same problem with my help also on my powerbook. The problem came suddenly and since I had just bought the pb I doubt its from a virus. I repaired permissions and that seemed to fixed things. I didnt know to try trashing the preferences though.... still learning the whole mac thing...

JRam

[stevehaslip]

I had the same problem with my help also on my powerbook. The problem came suddenly and since I had just bought the pb I doubt its from a virus. I repaired permissions and that seemed to fixed things. I didnt know to try trashing the preferences though.... still learning the whole mac thing...

JRam

Not all the prefences! just the help viewer and finder ones i think? i can't really remember it was ages since i did it.

[ferrisb]

I'm pretty sure that it's not a virus. It's only been online since Sunday, so I hope I haven't gotten anything that fast.

[HexMonkey]

The files that you should try deleting when this happens (all listed on the site mkrishnan gave) are the following. This alone will fix almost all help viewer problems.


Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist
Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpui.plist
Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpviewer.plist
Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.helpui/

[mkrishnan]

I'm pretty sure that it's not a virus. It's only been online since Sunday, so I hope I haven't gotten anything that fast.

Just FYI, there *is no virus*. It was just a scare. I don't want you to lose sleep at night! :( Hope you get it working again soon!

[ferrisb]

Thanks for the help guys. I trashed those files like the link that mkrishnan posted said to, and things are working great now. Thanks again for your help!