Preview Problems

[Jayhawk Raven]

I am having some trouble with Preview. I hope you might be able to help me figure out a fix.

Preview freezes frequently (at least daily). In addition, thumbnails are not displayed in the sidebar. (There is a dashed-line outline of a page, but no image.) Finally, the onscreen text is sometimes fuzzy. This usually resolves after half a minute or so.

When it freezes I use force quit, then restart my computer.

Is there a way to uninstall and then reinstall Preview? Is there something else I should try? I have pdfpenpro installed as well. I prefer Preview, because I tend to accidentally modify pdfs when I am using pdfpenpro.

I am still running 10.12.6. I installed 10.13 some months ago, but I had some bugs so I went back to 10.12 using time machine.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Startup Disk iMac Fusion
Graphics Radeon Pro 570 4096 MB

 

[organicCPU]

Things you could try:

- Remove these preferences files from your User folder and put them to your desktop or into trash (macOS will rebuild these files automatically):
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist
~/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.ViewState.plist
And this Folder:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

- Restart your Mac into Safe Mode (Hold down Shift key during start), then reboot normally -> this wipes caches
- Reset NVRAM -> Always a good idea after hardware changes, maybe after downgrades, too
- Install the Sierra Combo Update just over your current install -> Sometimes helps fixing the system and doesn't harm

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

Thank you very much. I did the first item, removing the files. I restarted, and that fixed at least some of the problems. The thumbnails, for example, showed up. I am getting ready to do the rest of the items you suggested, but I wanted to thank you for the reply. You rock.

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

Maybe I spoke too soon. When I tried to restart in Safe Mode, my computer booted from a different partition on my hard drive. I thought I must have done something wrong, so I went into system preferences and set it boot from the correct partition. This time when I restarted I would see the apple, then the status bar just below that. After fifteen seconds or so some text appeared in the upper left part of the screen. The text is about a "panic." I can't seem to get a good picture of the text. The screen should then go black. After ten seconds or so the apple would reappear. And so on... I let it continue cycling for over an hour before I killed it by pushing the power button until it turned off.

I have tried booting into safe mode. That does not work.

I have tried turning the machine off and resetting the nvram. Same thing happens.

I killed it again and removed all of the usb cables except the keyboard and mouse. Same thing happens.

I killed it again and unplugged it for a minute. I plugged it back and and let it sit for a minute before trying to boot into safe mode. Same thing.

I really am not sure what to do.

 

[DeltaMac]

You may have inadvertently deleted an important system file, in addition to the other files that you moved.
Easiest way back is to use your Time Machine backup, if you have that.
Or, just do a reinstall of the system:
Restart, holding Command-r
You will boot into your recovery system.
At the utilities menu screen, open Disk Utility. Run Disk First Aid on your drive. Should be OK, but just a quick test on that.
Quit Disk Utility, which returns you to the Utilities menu. Choose reinstall macOS, and continue.
That will reinstall your Sierra system. The reinstall won't touch your own files, apps and settings. It just reloads the system, and makes sure that all the system files are where they need to be. This takes about 30 minutes or so.
You should end up at your usual desktop, up and running again.

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

This is what I am doing. When I tried booting with Command-R I got to the desktop area where I could chose between disk utility, reinstall, etc. Disk First Aid ran fine.

I was not connected to the internet, though. Google suggested Option-Command-R, which I did instead. I was able to connect to wifi from that same screen, and High Sierra is now downloading. It says 52 minutes are left, so I am going to go wash my car.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

 

[DeltaMac]

If you had done the reinstall from the recovery system (Command-R), you would have just reinstalled Sierra.
Maybe HSierra will work better for you this time.
Let me know how it goes...

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

You may have inadvertently deleted an important system file, in addition to the other files that you moved.
Easiest way back is to use your Time Machine backup, if you have that.

I do have time machine backups. I could not, however, get the machine to boot without going Command-R route.
[doublepost=1526164678][/doublepost]

If you had done the reinstall from the recovery system (Command-R), you would have just reinstalled Sierra.
Maybe HSierra will work better for you this time.
Let me know how it goes...

I could not get that to work. When I clicked on reinstall it said it needed to verify with Apple. Since I was not connected to the internet it would not verify, and it just went back to the previous screen.

If there was a way to get wifi connected from that screen I wasn't bright enough to figure it out. So here we are.

Also, if High Sierra does not this time I can always use time machine to go back.

Thanks again.

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

So I let it run all night. This morning it still said 29 minutes remaining. Fortunately, it gave me the option of quitting, so I did.

I ran disk first aid again and it found nothing.

I went back to internet install and started over. It took over an hour before it restarted. It is still starting up, and that has been at least half an hour. The status bar is nearly complete, so my fingers are crossed.
[doublepost=1526232489][/doublepost]It finally completed. I am up and running, I hope.

 

[organicCPU]

Sorry for the hassle. I didn't see your further posts until now. I should have been more cautious if giving advice to delete something. Though, it's not easy to delete really important system files unintentionally these days with System Integrity Protection... obviously easy enough
Please let us know if Preview is working fine again on Sierra or High Sierra and if booting into Safe Mode is possible now.

When I tried to restart in Safe Mode, my computer booted from a different partition on my hard drive. I thought I must have done something wrong, so I went into system preferences and set it boot from the correct partition.

Is it your intention to have more than one booting partition? Could it be that the initial downgrade to Sierra screwed up the partitions due to APFS and HFS conversions?

 

[Jayhawk Raven]

When I replaced my Mac Mini with this iMac I wanted to make sure that I could access all my old data. It seemed simple enough to put it on a partition on the hard drive, as the drive is bigger than I currently need.

Is there some reason I should not have two bootable partitions on the same internal drive?

 

[organicCPU]

Is there some reason I should not have two bootable partitions on the same internal drive?

No. I was just asking because Safe Mode booted another partition. I was thinking that something like this could happen because of back and forth conversion from HFS to APFS to HFS. If two booting partitions are your intention, then nothing is wrong with it.
Sometimes, if I do have more than one bootable partition attached (on external volumes) and mounted, launchd gets a bit confused. If this happens, apps from the wrong drive can get launched and the Open with… contextual menu is suffering from overpopulation with many versions of the same app. It doesn't happen often to me as I usually prevent mounting two or more bootable partitions at the same time. In rare cases it happens, I need to rebuild launchd database.