iMovie '09 crashes

[elfherbie]

I just received the new version of iLife -- eagerly anticipating the new features in iMovie '09. The application, however, will not fully launch without crashing. It performs "updates" and then two sets of pinwheels spin and spin until it eventually crashes.

I have a iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, running Leopard (10.5.6), and have 2 GB of SDRAM installed.

Please advise!

 

[elfherbie]

update

So after tinkering a bit, I found that the application will launch when my external hard drive is disconnected (Western Digital: Book Edition). Hopefully, there is some easy fix (or update either from Apple or WD) that will allow the two to communicate -- since that is where I store my video files. Perhaps relate to the media browser?

 

[Garrod]

I'm having exactly the same problem; iMovie 09 appears to be loading, only for a window to pop up telling me it's unexpectedly quit. It's never got further than that.

Interestingly, it appears my system specs are identical to the topic starter, elfherbie...all the way down to the Western Digital external HD. I powered mine off but still to no avail.

Again, running disk first aid and a re-install of iMovie 09 hasn't fixed the problem. Fortunately iMovie HD is still on here so at least I have that to fall back on to!

When I get a minute tomorrow I'll try and install iLife 09 on my VMWare Fusion Mac OS X virtual machine - I know there'll be no sound but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Any help or advice from my original problem will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Garrod]

I'm having exactly the same problem; iMovie 09 appears to be loading, only for a window to pop up telling me it's unexpectedly quit. It's never got further than that.

Interestingly, it appears my system specs are identical to the topic starter, elfherbie...all the way down to the Western Digital external HD. I powered mine off but still to no avail.

Again, running disk first aid and a re-install of iMovie 09 hasn't fixed the problem. Fortunately iMovie HD is still on here so at least I have that to fall back on to!

When I get a minute tomorrow I'll try and install iLife 09 on my VMWare Fusion Mac OS X virtual machine - I know there'll be no sound but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Any help or advice from my original problem will be greatly appreciated!

Right; I've installed iLife 09 on my VMWare Fusion Mac OS X virtual machine. iMovie loads and runs fine (sans sound, but that's VMWare Fusion's fault, not mine!). I'm running MacOS X 10.5.6 on the virtual machine and it's running with just 768mb of memory so I'm really at a loss now.

Any ideas? Please?!

 

[JediMeister]

Garrod, nice troubleshooting steps, though I would have created another user account to test iMovie in with the drive connected before reinstalling. That would have told you if iMovie even needed reinstallation or if it was something peculiar to the settings for your user account. If you tested in another user account, and have reinstalled iMovie, then it means that there is something else affecting iMovie, a distinct possibility of which are non-Apple QuickTime plugins, usually found in /Library/QuickTime or ~/Library/QuickTime. Incidentally, before reinstalling iMovie, had you gone into the /Library/Receipts folder and removed the iMovie-related .pkg files?

 

[Garrod]

Garrod, nice troubleshooting steps, though I would have created another user account to test iMovie in with the drive connected before reinstalling. That would have told you if iMovie even needed reinstallation or if it was something peculiar to the settings for your user account. If you tested in another user account, and have reinstalled iMovie, then it means that there is something else affecting iMovie, a distinct possibility of which are non-Apple QuickTime plugins, usually found in /Library/QuickTime or ~/Library/QuickTime. Incidentally, before reinstalling iMovie, had you gone into the /Library/Receipts folder and removed the iMovie-related .pkg files?

Thanks for your advice, JediMeister. I haven't performed either of your tips but, with hindsight, I should have! I'll follow your advice through (tomorrow now; I've got to go out to play pool and drink beer shortly!) and I'll report back with any success or not.

 

[JAT]

This doesn't work so well on Windows, but on Mac it's a dream:

Setup a partition, or a small older drive, whatever works for you, as a bootable drive. Use that to test problems or new software that you are unsure of.

I use a Mini, and it is faster to boot from a Firewire drive than the internal 2.5" laptop drive. So I kept the OSX install on the internal for testing, even though the external is my main drive.

 

[Garrod]

Right, after a couple of days away from home I've finally come back to try and sort out my iMovie 09 problem.

Before I did anything, I just tried to boot iMovie up - this was without a restart of my Mac (I left it on batch processing), even though history had shown that it would crash at startup. Guess what? It now works fine! I have no idea what caused all of this and there's no-one else that uses my computer.

All very curious but hey, at least it works now!

 

[BizzyMac]

iMovie 09 Crashes

Garrod, nice troubleshooting steps, though I would have created another user account to test iMovie in with the drive connected before reinstalling. That would have told you if iMovie even needed reinstallation or if it was something peculiar to the settings for your user account. If you tested in another user account, and have reinstalled iMovie, then it means that there is something else affecting iMovie, a distinct possibility of which are non-Apple QuickTime plugins, usually found in /Library/QuickTime or ~/Library/QuickTime. Incidentally, before reinstalling iMovie, had you gone into the /Library/Receipts folder and removed the iMovie-related .pkg files?

OK, I'm having the same problem, but only under my profile. I'm using an external HD, but iMovie crashes whether the HD is plugged in or not. Have checked all /Library/QuickTime locations and nothing new there. Any thoughts?