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seh80

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 2, 2005
257
1
Chicago, IL USA
I spent about four hours with customer support between the phone and instant message support a few days ago. I have a dot mac account, and use the Mail app. It has stopped working. It works on my iphone, it works on webmail, but the Mail app does not.
Other computers in the house using dot mac and Mail work fine. I can't get the Mail app to connect to any email accounts, such as gmail either.
Phone support moved me up 3 levels of folks to talk to, we spent a couple hours on the phone. Finally, fixed. Like four days later, it's gone again. I don't quite remember what all we ended up doing.

iPhoto doesn't work. It will for a while. Then I get an error message and it just hangs. This was months ago, I gave up. Support couldn't solve it, I think I asked here too and never got it figured out. I switched to Picasa and have been happy since it never seems to mess up.

During the time when the iPHoto thing was bugging me, I totally wiped out the machine and started fresh. All the problems returned in no time.

So I know I can call support back. But I get the feeling this is all just going to keep happening. The computer was purchased in 2007, running 10.6.2 (imac). It's all updated, etc.

If I make a new user account, is it possible IT wont have these errors? Or is this a system wide thing?
I know having dot mac will move most of my things along for me, mail, address book, ical, bookmarks, dock items, etc. But what about Picasa? I spent months and months organizing that. I suppose there is no way to just shove it over to another user account as is? I have an external... which is a mess of duplicate files and a lack of organization. But I do have one, and I am going to guess that is how I have to move things? I just lose all of my organization and such?

I'm starting to understand why people are moving to all web based apps. I am sick of nothing working. I love the Mail app though. Just love it. But I don't want to have to "fix" it every couple days.

Any thoughts or help much appreciated.
 

Gregg2

macrumors 604
May 22, 2008
7,182
1,173
Milwaukee, WI
Mac Help has lots of info on Accounts. I'm not sure it will address your specific question, but you might find some generic info about apps. My apps are installed independent of any Account. Are you sure yours are not?
 

Awfdixon

macrumors newbie
Dec 26, 2009
4
0
Hi,

The first thing you should do is backup. Use Time Machine to backup to an external drive. You shouldn't attempt ANYTHING until you've done this!

When you "wiped" your computer, did you completely erase your computer? Did it still have the user accounts afterward?

If you completely wiped your computer, how did you recover your files?

Have you tried creating a new "virgin" user account and tried dragging some photos into iPhoto in that account? Does it crash?

Creating a new user account should be a last resort, and you should try to confine the problem to your user account first, as copying settings across (and even files) can be very difficult.
 
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