IPhoto Won't Load Anymore!

[mileslong]

for no reason all of a sudden my iphoto wont load pictures. the application opens but it says it is loading photos but it just spins and spins for an hour and never loads. the pics are still there, they are in my finder under photos. this is the first problem i have had with iphoto like this other than its normal bloated performance issues. what on earth can be causing this? how can i try to correct it? will i have to reinstall tiger?

whoever cures this problem gets their choice of any music discography of their choice from my collection, i have over 5,000 songs. im sorry that is has come to this but i am desparate for help...

thanks in advance, here is my setup:

Tiger OSX 10.4.4
17" powerbook G4 PPC
1.67ghz 1 GB DDR SDRAM
100 gb

 

[mileslong]

is iphoto lashing out at me because i have been trying to find a suitable replacement for it? has apple installed some malicious spyware that notified them that i have been downloading other photo applications because iphoto is so slow? cant type anymore, there is a black helicopter outside my window....

 

[Applespider]

Are we talking iPhoto 4, 5 or 6?

Since it looks like you a 2005 Mac with Tiger, I'll assume that you have 5.

First off, if your pics are there in the Finder, all is not lost.

Next thing to do is try to rebuild the Library (this is basically resetting iPhoto's file system not reimporting the images).

In iPhoto 5, you need to quit out of iPhoto (use Force Quit if you have to) and then relaunch it while you hold down the Apple key (Command) and the Option key. See if that allows it to load.

Incidentally, had you amended any pictures/folders in the Finder without going through iPhoto? iPhoto 5 really doesn't like that. So far as being slow goes, it might be due to the type of camera you have. There was some discussion over on the Apple boards that some camera manufacturers' Makernotes - what iPhoto store in its library.data (it's not there in iPhoto 6 so can't check). If that file on your system is more than it would take if you had about 4K per picture, that's what might be bloating it and meaning it takes ages to load.

Once it's fixed and you're looking for a faster option. iPhoto 6 is much quicker.

 

[mileslong]

thanks for the response!

which option or options should i choose now that i have launched iphoto like you said?

1)rebuild the photos small thumbnails
2)rebuild all of the photos thumbnails
3)rebuild the iphoto library database
4)recvoer orphaned photos in the iphoto library folder?

 

[newmaccanada]

whoever cures this problem gets their choice of any music discography of their choice from my collection, i have over 5,000 songs. im sorry that is has come to this but i am desparate for help...

This is just a stab in the dark. I have an ibook g4 (133, 1.25 gb ram) and have the same prolem (first with iphoto 05 then with 06). It's wierd -- doesn't happen at work when I am plugged into the network, but it happens at home when I am using airport card to access home wireless network.

But if I turn off my airport card, photos losd flawlessly, no spinning beachballs. for some reason, iphoto and airport don't go together for me.

 

[mileslong]

i repaired permissions and rebuilt database but it still doesnt open, im trying the rebuilding process one more time to see what happens. i will close out of my airport and try that as well. it always worked before though. i dont know what to do now...

 

[spurzem]

iphoto won't download ---my fix was..

For me the issue turned out not to be iPhoto at all. I was getting the same exact problems---wouldn't download pics--said it was an unrecognizable format, etc. I stuck the memory card into a reader and voila! there were all the pics. So I saved the pics ( just in case ) and then put the memory card back in the camera and searched the menu until I found the 'reformat'. I reformatted the card and it now works perfectly. I ( like probably many people who are not geeks ) did not realize that the memory card could become fragmented and not perform correctly . So anyone who is having this problem might want to try reformatting their camera's card.