Wife's MBA not living up to the "it just works" at the moment!

[Cassady]

Hello all,

Would appreciate some help. Have trawled the Apple support forums, and done what was suggested, to no avail.

Symptoms:

Both Safari and Chrome, AND the App Store are affected.
Firefox working flawlessly, which has me all sorts of confused.

When trying to go to any website in Safari or Chrome, the pages stay white/blank. The underlying data is 'there', as evidenced by the screen grab of the Wiki homepage, but nothing I do fixes it (the grey pop-up is over where my cursor is resting, and is pointing to an underlying link).

Similarly, the MAS stays blank on all pages. I am told there are two updates, but irrespective of which tab I select, the MAS will not load anything on the contents pages, and remain blank.

I have cleaned out the cache folders to Safari, Chrome and the App Store.
Wiped the plist files.
Played around with the date settings.
P'ramm'ed.
Tried the guest account, and safe mode.
Rebooted and restarted
Killed appstore related processes in Activity Monitor.

All as per suggestions in the various help articles, all without any change.

Her work forces her to run outdated Flash and Silverlight to access work websites. Firefox may also not be updated, as a result. Could Flash etc. be involved?
Running El Capitan macOS 10.11.6.

Hoping someone can think of something to try - never had a Mac do something that couldn't be solved with a bit of digging.

 

[komatsu]

Could be anything causing this!

My first port of call would be to change your Mac's DNS to Google

http://osxdaily.com/2015/12/05/change-dns-server-settings-mac-os-x/
[doublepost=1515432932][/doublepost]Also try this, go to

Close Safari

Navigate to:

home/Library/Prefernces and rename the "com.apple.Safari.plist" to "com.apple.Safari.plist.OLD"

Re-start Safari

 

[Cassady]

Could be anything causing this!

My first port of call would be to change your Mac's DNS to Google

http://osxdaily.com/2015/12/05/change-dns-server-settings-mac-os-x/
[doublepost=1515432932][/doublepost]Also try this, go to

Close Safari

Navigate to:

home/Library/Prefernces and rename the "com.apple.Safari.plist" to "com.apple.Safari.plist.OLD"

Re-start Safari

Thanks for the suggestions. Tried all the above, and no dice!

Here be what Apple.com displays as. As with before, there are active elements below the white, that are simply not being displayed.

 

[Cassady]

Oh, and just for fun - Messages isn't working either. Can access its preferences, and can confirm she is signed in, but cannot get the Messages main window to display...

Something very odd going on here. Getting tempted to upgrade, to see if that does the trick - but given that the App Store is misbehaving, not sure how I would do that either!!

 

[daflake]

Apple and “it just works” ended a long time ago.

You may have to back you files up and reload the system to get it working, especially if you have uninstalled the apps and they are still acting up. Could be a corrupt system file.

 

[Cassady]

Apple and “it just works” ended a long time ago.

You may have to back you files up and reload the system to get it working, especially if you have uninstalled the apps and they are still acting up. Could be a corrupt system file.

I can delete Chrome, and then try the reinstall, but presumably that isn't an option with Messages, Safari and the App Store, correct?

Doing a TM backup at the moment - and then will see.

But really hoping I don't need to nuke and pave - this is a wife's work machine (self-employed), so the downtime to start everything a fresh would be challenging...

 

[daflake]

I can delete Chrome, and then try the reinstall, but presumably that isn't an option with Messages, Safari and the App Store, correct?

Doing a TM backup at the moment - and then will see.

But really hoping I don't need to nuke and pave - this is a wife's work machine (self-employed), so the downtime to start everything a fresh would be challenging...

That is true, which is why I mentioned to try reinstalling the OS. If this is a work machine, I would validate that backup BEFORE you wipe anything. In fact, I wouldn't totally trust it and move all important documents/databases to an external drive or a cloud solution just to be safe.

 

[708692]

Try creating a new user account. Does safari and chrome work then?

 

[Cassady]

Try creating a new user account. Does safari and chrome work then?

Appreciate the reply. I tried a Guest login, and Safe Mode - both have the same issues. And in both, Firefox works.

Would you still advise I create a new User account to test, or would Guest/Safe Mode as above, cover it?

 

[708692]

Guest would be fine. Very strange!

 

[Cassady]

Guest would be fine. Very strange!

Has me scratching my head as well... At the point where I am thinking of booting into Recovery Mode on her MBA running El Cap, and then seeing if I can "re-install(?)" from my Sierra-USB installer... Would that work? That should maintain all her data, but simply 'replace' the OS?

 

[superbovine]

Has me scratching my head as well... At the point where I am thinking of booting into Recovery Mode on her MBA running El Cap, and then seeing if I can "re-install(?)" from my Sierra-USB installer... Would that work? That should maintain all her data, but simply 'replace' the OS?

First rule in IT is: Always have a backup. It doesn't matter how logical it is. Have a backup.

In this case, external storage would the the proper choice for the backup.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Update Flash -- there's a new version just out.

I would -temporarily remove- Silverlight, to see if that makes a difference.
Then, reinstall.

The advice above about creating a new, "test account" is good. But... don't put anything in it other than the regular Apple-provided software. How does it behave? When you're done testing, just delete it.

I would also suggest that you stop using Chrome, at least temporarily.
Try Firefox or the EPIC privacy browser.

 

[Cassady]

First rule in IT is: Always have a backup. It doesn't matter how logical it is. Have a backup.

In this case, external storage would the the proper choice for the backup.

Have a TM to external backup running, and will use this AND copy crucial files over to a DAS running RAID 5, until all done and dusted, thanks!
[doublepost=1515661678][/doublepost]

OP:

Update Flash -- there's a new version just out.

I would -temporarily remove- Silverlight, to see if that makes a difference.
Then, reinstall.

The advice above about creating a new, "test account" is good. But... don't put anything in it other than the regular Apple-provided software. How does it behave? When you're done testing, just delete it.

I would also suggest that you stop using Chrome, at least temporarily.
Try Firefox or the EPIC privacy browser.

Thanks - I'm pretty sure Silverlight/Flash is the root of this all. So that's not a bad idea, I guess - can always reinstall after the fact.

Tried the "Guest Account" and 'boot into Safe Mode', and the symptoms remained.
Firefox worked. Safari, Chrome and MAS did not.

Not a fan of Chrome either - but unfortunately, she has to log in to work related websites. Her company, as huge as it is, are not fans of Mac/Apple, and we have had quite a few problems getting Outlook etc. to work.

Part of the problem is that they are in the real estate industry, where many of their 'users' are not necessarily very clued up - so they try to keep things sweet and simple: (i.e.) if it is working, they don't change it unnecessarily, or risk countless IT calls about "this and that not working anymore/it looks different/where is X,Y,Z/why did you change it" etc.
So their websites require Flash/Silverlight etc., despite it being (increasingly) abandoned, and the reason why Firefox must not be updated (the newer versions don't take Silverlight as a plugin anymore, AFAIK). Chrome is the only browser that works on another work-website, and she uses Safari for general/personal browsing.