Main menu: Help; "Mac help" does not function.

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Dale Moore

Registered
Hi to all,

And a million Thanks if you can assist me with some answers.

Background- Bought new iMac in July. 1st mac was a 7100/66. I Love Apple. I battle with PC people all the time about its many benefits. But I'm really having my doubts about it's reliability these days. The normal stand-bys are amazingly buggy. Very shocked. Anyway... Case in point-

I can not get the "Mac help" in the main menu to work. Not for the "OS" portition atleast. The window will open. Usually blank. Somtimes with the beginning screen with the blue links. Usually I have to hit the "home" icon the get that. Anyway, from there it is non-responsive! I click the blue links and nothing happens. All I want to do is get to the "Index". It just ignores my click.

I finally took the time to copy all my data off the hard drive. Do an erase of the hard drive and install the everything fresh from the DVD that came with the iMac. Once that was finished, I did a software update to bring everything current to OS 10.4.4. Upon trying "Mac help" I felt I had it fixed.
I got to the index. ( I was feeling successful with just that ) Clicked the letter "F". That worked. Clicked on "faxing". The result was Nothing!! It just stared at me. I backed out of Help and thought I'd started over. And now I'm back at square 1. I can't get it to bring up the index aqain. I'm trying to find work and the simplest thing is holding me back. Please let me know if this is happening to anyone else and what on earth is causing this malfuction. It shouldn't be this hard for something that was so reliable with mac software in the Past. Again many Thanks to anyone with some good answers!!! -Dale
 
The X Lab solution linked above is thorough, but here's a possible quick fix: Help Viewer Help is an AppleScript that "clears the contents of your (User) Help Viewer Cache folder." It says it's to speed up a slow Help Viewer, but I've found it's brought a non-functioning Help Viewer back to life on a few occasions.
 
HandyMac said:
The X Lab solution linked above is thorough, but here's a possible quick fix: Help Viewer Help is an AppleScript that "clears the contents of your (User) Help Viewer Cache folder." It says it's to speed up a slow Help Viewer, but I've found it's brought a non-functioning Help Viewer back to life on a few occasions.
Click to expand...

I just used OnyX to reset Help Viewer (it's a very quick solution). It seemed to fix the problem but time will tell. I had used the manual steps to delete the cache folder and the pref files previously but the problem returned after a short time which is what makes me believe that it's one of my start up items (I only use six) or a Firefox extension (I use five).

If the problem returns I'll need to rule those out one after the other and let the developer know.

I seldom use help but I noticed the problem when Mail wouldn't bring up Help when I was wondering about a Rule. So I have no idea when the problem first showed up. I was also getting the blank screen on selecting Help in the Finder, only clicking the Home icon brought it up.

Anyways... after the OnyX reset it's still OK so far.
 
OnyX is a gem; I'd forgotten that it can reset Mac Help. OnyX's Help (rather poorly translated from French) doesn't specify which files are removed by its Reset Mac Help command, but I suppose it would be easy to check against the instructions on the X Lab page.
 
Well, hours later, nothing has changed. Most of your suggestions were a bit over my head without some step by step procedures. OnyX seemed to be a good way to go. Once I downloaded the free software, I was informed I had to get the latest updates. I couldn't get that accomplished after manhours later until I reboot from the "Install Disc" which allowed me to download without it kicking me off in 30 minutes. I would disable that in my Network preference but somehow it would be changed "by another application" as informed by an error message. (this roller coaster get so convoluted with other problems, it's driving me mad) Anyway OnyX seems to help but not for long. I get so far, than it just doesn't respond.
I feel hard pressed to pay the $170 to apple to get some on-line help, but not working, needing $$ for food and needing this bleeping computer to fax and print resumes is a catch-22 at the max.
Another issue involves downloading .sit files to allow my printer to work. It use to be "self-extracting". Now it goes to the "Disc Utility" which I clueless about and "Help" won't help. Plus "Disc Utility" says to "Select a disk, volume, or image" and yet it doesn't show my downloaded ".sit" as even an option.
My guess is that something at the core is corrupted by I already did the erase and clean install and I don't believe that even worked properly because some things like my wireless keyboard still worked without re-installing the software from its supplied DVD. -Help Please. Thanks.
 
Well, you've got a whole plate load of problems, maybe someone has some other suggestions.

Re the Help system, I spent some more time on it and indeed a reset via OnyX or other method only results in a short term fix. It reverts to broken in a short time. It also happens in other user accounts, not just my primary one which rules out log in items. The only thing I've not done yet is uninstall BroadBand Optimizer. Maybe later on...

The console log shows this error when Help fails:

2006-01-27 16:00:29.851 Help Viewer[2917] Uncaught exception - *** End of archive encountered prematurely at 400
2006-01-27 16:00:29.852 Help Viewer[2917] *** Attempt to remove unrecognized exception handler 0xbfffdd20

It's not a big issue for me, only an irritation but I'd like to find a solution.
 
Well I know it's an Apple problem and I'll just have to wait for an update to fix the problem. In the meantime, this computer has been a major source of frustration, waste of time and money. -Wonderful

Side Question if you please.
Mac's were great at knowing what to do when clicking on a file. Case in point. A downloaded .sit or .sea file would do its thing to open, expand, and install software. With OS X, I click these files and Disc Utility opens which makes no sense to me. Is it possible my system preferences needs tweaking? I've looked and tried numerous times but nothing seems to address this issue. In the past, as I've said, Mac's were very intuitive. Now there act more like PC's which always wanted you to hold its hand and guide it along.
If I sound like I've had it, your right! If I could have Apple buy this headache back I would in a heartbeat. It's just to labor intensive for the simplest things. I know the OS X is a new way of doing things, but without a manual or Mac Help, I'm just guessing all the time trying to stumble upon the answers. I believe Apple should make some concessions for the lack of "Mac Help" support due to their software problems which have been existent for months now. Without a functioning "manual", it's a fairly haphazard way of getting to know how the basics operate. Thanks for listening to me rant. I apologize.

By the way, thanks to SIMBALALA for finding that link to the "Mac Help" discussion. I've tried to find any discussion involving this problem by utilizing the search feature on-line at the Apple support site for quite a while. Which lead me to believe it was something wrong with my system, preferences or an internal conflict. Nothing ever came close to find what SIMBALALA found. How did you find it so fast? For me, asking the search feature to do the finding should have been more than enuff. Why it wasn't readily available via this method is disturbing at best. Now knowing that its "out there" with others is somewhat comforting and relieves me of trying to rectifying the problem and the headache and man hours that involves. Thank you very much for that link and feed back.

Any recommendations for third party MAC manuals available thru Amazon.com or elsewhere that you feel may work well for me. I've seen a few and read reviews but none seem a hands down winner for me. I'd appreciate any guidance from you fine folks. You've been more helpful than Apple has who has my hard earned cash and seeming uncaring for this shortfall.
 
Sorry for the previous long question(s). Still need some assistances if anyone would like to help. Thanks for your time.
 
Dale Moore said:
By the way, thanks to SIMBALALA for finding that link to the "Mac Help" discussion. I've tried to find any discussion involving this problem by utilizing the search feature on-line at the Apple support site for quite a while. Which lead me to believe it was something wrong with my system, preferences or an internal conflict. Nothing ever came close to find what SIMBALALA found.

How did you find it so fast?
Click to expand...
I dunno. ;)

I guess it's just long practice at searching, not just for Apple stuff but for tech info in general.

I did subscribe to that thread and a response was posted today by someone else confirming the validity of Moonraker's work around.

Note that if you use the fix you won't want to use OnyX to reset help in the future. OnyX deletes all the folders within com.apple.helpui so it will also delete the folder(s) you've carefully made read-only.
 
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