Installed a Software Update, now half my apps don't work.

I recently installed a software update for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard last night, (which contained a Safari update and a Java update, fairly routine stuff) after the restart, I noticed Safari was giving me the "Safari Has unexpectedly quit" message upon Launch. Thinking maybe software update had dome something, i deleted Safari and downloaded an older version that I knew worked. Now, installer won't even launch and a quick test of my applications reveals that about half of them all "unexpectedly quit" upon launch. I've run permission repairs on both disk utility and Onyx, and while both repaired many errors, it still hasn't fixed the problem.


I'd really like to avoid a full OS reinstall if at all possible, so any suggestions you guys might have would be greatly appreciated.

Best do a combo update, and a permissions repair right afterwards

Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1

Nope, installer just keeps quitting on me.

Can you do a restore from backup rather than reinstall?

Why is it that you can't do a clean install?

chscag said:

Can you do a restore from backup rather than reinstall?

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I have no backups. BAD, I know, but I have no external HD to set Time Machine up on.

Air said:

Why is it that you can't do a clean install?

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I CAN, but it's going to take a few hours, I have to back everything up, reinstall, put it all back on there...

If this is what Software Update is going to do, I think I'm just fine using the older software. I guess I better get to doing this reinstall, this stinks.

If this is what Software Update is going to do, I think I'm just fine using the older software. I guess I better get to doing this reinstall, this stinks.

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That certainly isn't normal. The only thing I can think of is that the update was corrupt and caused the problems you're experiencing. The only Apple updates that make me extremely apprehensive about installing are the firmware updates and patches. Backups don't really help if one of those goes haywire.

chscag said:

That certainly isn't normal. The only thing I can think of is that the update was corrupt and caused the problems you're experiencing. The only Apple updates that make me extremely apprehensive about installing are the firmware updates and patches. Backups don't really help if one of those goes haywire.

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Did a quick google search, and found that the Java is very unstable and prone to issues similar to the ones that I'm having (Java 7 I believe) and I'm starting to think that this is the issue. It's possible that certain Apps (such as Opera) can handle Java 7 while maybe Safari can't.


I'm also finding that uninstalling Java is not an easy task, something about the terminal and I'm not confident I wouldn't mess up somewhere, so I'll just have to go ahead with the reinstall and stop at Java 6.

Would an archive and install possibly work, or am I going to have to do the entire erase and install?

Snow Leopard automatically does an archive and reinstall so theoretically all your data should be preserved. However, knowing "Murphy" is always lurking about, I would backup what you can if possible before going at it.

chscag said:

Snow Leopard automatically does an archive and reinstall so theoretically all your data should be preserved. However, knowing "Murphy" is always lurking about, I would backup what you can if possible before going at it.

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Exactly what I'm doing right now, thanks.

Been looking all day, and for the life of me I cannot find my OS X 10.6 install disk. Seeing as there's no other way to fix this, I guess I'll just have to retire the old Macbook to the closet...

I even tried booting in Safe Mode to run the combo update, and I still get the application quit unexpectedly message, whatever went wrong it must have seriously messed with the core of the OS, almost nothing works now, it actually feels like it's deteriorating.

And all for a software update, for java no less, awesome.

Maybe somebody can make sense of this?

View attachment CrashReport.doc

Apologies for posting so many times in a row here. but I think I'm figuring this out bit by bit.

It's Java. Something with the "Java 7" update has gone wrong, any apps that use Java (or most of them, anyway) have been rendered useless by this update. Not only that, but the update removed Java 6 from my system, but only in part. I think Java 6 and 7 are running simultaneously, and therefore clashing on certain operations, leading to these crash reports.

Not sure if this is true, but Java must have some effect on the installer process as well, because I cannot launch installer to install the old Java back onto my system. And because Java 7 didn't properly install, there's no .plugin located anywhere for me to delete.

I think this is what happened, or I could be totally wrong, whatever. All I know is my computer isn't working and I still don't know how to fix it.

All of the errors seem to start like this: (this is java preferences as well, oh the irony)

Process: Java Preferences [304]
Path: /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app/Contents/MacOS/Java Preferences
Identifier: com.apple.java.JavaPreferences
Version: 13.9.5 (13.9.5)
Build Info: JavaApplicationSupport-2650000~1
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [89]

Date/Time: 2013-04-27 22:43:26.155 -0400
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6

Interval Since Last Report: 392758 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 75
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 41 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 3
Anonymous UUID: 610B5A0F-BC34-4EA6-9007-1A33310198E8

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 2

Application Specific Information:

Java information:
Exception type: Bus Error (0xa) at pc=101413c00

Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (20.45-b01-451 mixed mode macosx-amd64)

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