ical hangs

[gear02]

Once upon a time, I tried loading a google calendar into ical. Since then, my ical has been hanging ever since. ical loads, but I get the infernal beach ball forever and it uses 100% of my Intel Core CPU. I've tried everything. I've tried deleting my plist, ical files in application support, in cache, even the app itself. I've tried reinstalling it using Pacifist and for some reason it still tries to load those calendars. If I go into the preferences pane (which I can if I hurry since it locks up roughly 2 seconds after ical loads), I see a message saying: "waiting for server response".

Please, I really want to use ical. Any ideas?

 

[mad jew]

If you disconnect from the internet, can it load the Preferences?

 

[gear02]

If you disconnect from the internet, can it load the Preferences?

Nope tried that.

 

[mad jew]

By the way, if you're connected to a LAN and you unplug your modem, then the Mac will think you're still connected to the internet so maybe check System Preferences (Network pane) to be 100% sure you aren't connect to the 'net. Sorry and ignore me if that's painfully obvious.

Now, try opening iCal in a new user account. It should open because I'm almost certain your problem will be lying within your Home folder. I'm really quite surprised it didn't launch after you trashed the Application Support files. That's why I'd be interested to hear how the new user account goes. Good luck.

 

[mkrishnan]

EDIT: I think this is what you tried, but in case it isn't....

Try this. With iCal closed, go to ~/library/application support/ical/sources and then drag all the folders in here to the desktop. Also find com.apple.ical.plist (~/library/preferences/) and drag it to the desktop. Then start iCal.

Each of the folders in sources corresponds to one calendar. So, if one of those calendars is actually one that has stuff you need, you might need to play with dragging the folders back one at a time (so that you restore the working calendars but not the corrupted one).

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, I can't believe mkrishnan's method doesn't/won't work. Did you try all these things at once or did you try removing the items one-by-one and replacing them between removals?

 

[gear02]

By the way, if you're connected to a LAN and you unplug your modem, then the Mac will think you're still connected to the internet so maybe check System Preferences (Network pane) to be 100% sure you aren't connect to the 'net. Sorry and ignore me if that's painfully obvious.

Now, try opening iCal in a new user account. It should open because I'm almost certain your problem will be lying within your Home folder. I'm really quite surprised it didn't launch after you trashed the Application Support files. That's why I'd be interested to hear how the new user account goes. Good luck.

I just tried that and it still hangs. I opened ical in a new account and that worked so you're right about my home folder. I even tried copying the app support files and the plists over to my current home folder and that didn't work.

What I noticed is that the waiting for server response seems to be .mac related since when I opened it in my test account the message was briefly there but then switched to "no account" or something like that. I don't have a .mac account so I'm not sure why it's not timing out...

 

[gear02]

EDIT: I think this is what you tried, but in case it isn't....

Try this. With iCal closed, go to ~/library/application support/ical/sources and then drag all the folders in here to the desktop. Also find com.apple.ical.plist (~/library/preferences/) and drag it to the desktop. Then start iCal.

Each of the folders in sources corresponds to one calendar. So, if one of those calendars is actually one that has stuff you need, you might need to play with dragging the folders back one at a time (so that you restore the working calendars but not the corrupted one).

I actually deleted all of the folders and the plist and that still locks up.

What's interesting is that when I do that I only see the home and work calendar (as per default), but when it locks up and I force quit and start it up again I see my old calendars return.

 

[mkrishnan]

Hmm, that's really strange. Even if there were server problems accessing the cal, it should not cause an issue. Copies of served calendars are also stored locally. For me, when a served calendar fails to load, I merely get a red exclamation point next to it on the left side. I can still see entries in the version stored locally, and everything else works fine.

One more thing to try... make sure there is not some other process using iCal's resources running. If you have iCal Events or a similar widget, kill it. Then go to activity monitor, and type iCal in the search bar -- see if you see anything besides iCal come up, i.e. a session agent. Or else also try typing in "helper" and see if you get the iCal Helper. If you do, force quit it, make sure iCal is closed itself, and then repeat the procedure you did (trash plist, cache, app support) but also look for the ical helper plist file and the iCal alarmscheduler plist file and delete those as well....

 

[gear02]

Hmm, that's really strange. Even if there were server problems accessing the cal, it should not cause an issue. Copies of served calendars are also stored locally. For me, when a served calendar fails to load, I merely get a red exclamation point next to it on the left side. I can still see entries in the version stored locally, and everything else works fine.

One more thing to try... make sure there is not some other process using iCal's resources running. If you have iCal Events or a similar widget, kill it. Then go to activity monitor, and type iCal in the search bar -- see if you see anything besides iCal come up, i.e. a session agent. Or else also try typing in "helper" and see if you get the iCal Helper. If you do, force quit it, make sure iCal is closed itself, and then repeat the procedure you did (trash plist, cache, app support) but also look for the ical helper plist file and the iCal alarmscheduler plist file and delete those as well....

Nope. No helpers or other resources. I've tried the same thing but the same thing occurs.

Btw thanks for your help! I don't know where to turn!

 

[gear02]

I signed up for a trial .mac account and now it stopped trying to load. However, I don't think that's the problem. I think somehow it knows what calendars were there previously and reloads them even after deleting the cache and the plist. Then it locks up trying to go to google to put those calendars. Even without a network connection, it keeps trying.

Please please help. I would really appreciate it!

 

[mad jew]

I'm stuck. If you've deleted everything iCal-related but it still isn't working for you then maybe it's time to migrate all your other files and settings across to that new (working) account.

 

[gear02]

I'm stuck. If you've deleted everything iCal-related but it still isn't working for you then maybe it's time to migrate all your other files and settings across to that new (working) account.

I sorta fixed it. I turned off isync and it works great now. But now I can't sync from Entourage. Any thoughts as to why it locks up and loads calendars when I turn on isync?

 

[mad jew]

No idea but have you tried the obvious - remove com.apple.isync.plist?