Recent Macintosh ( MacBook ) Fiasco !

MacBook Problems in December
( The December 3rd Fiasco ! + a few additional days ! )

It all started simply enough when i noticed that QuickTime wasn't working.
That was the only thing that seemed amiss.

So i tried several old standard fixes which didn't work.

Then i looked on The Apple.com site to find a New QuickTime, and was told that it comes included with SnowLeopard ( et. al. ).
But still; There was an older version which i downloaded, but it wouldn’t work with my OS ?
So there was NO ALTERNATIVE except to ReInstall SnowLeopard, just to get A New QuickTime !

So i Re-Installed Snow Leopard OS X.6.3

It would have been nice if The Installation Process would allow The User to Load Specific Items and have The Installer Install them properly,
But for whatever reasons; Apple has always insisted that you Install Everything in One Big Dump.

Then Everything Broke.
Well, not EVERYTHING.
i was VERY surprised that so many things suddenly Broke.
With some After-Thought; i’ve come to ‘remember’ that many applications and such need to be loaded in A Specific Order.
When i ReInstalled SnowLeopard X.6.3; This was incompatible with many applications that were subsequently installed expecting to work with X.6.>3 which has since been upgraded, to Version X.6.8.
But still ( … )

The first thing that seemed very wrong was that None of my old Pages Documents would open.
i panicked a little, but i did not become hysterical.

( i just noticed that AutoSpell Correction, while ON in the Preferences Pane, is not Working! )
Neither is The Highlight Text Menu.
( Highlight a word and Control Click to bring up The Menu with ‘Look up in Dictionary’, amoung other things ! )

That is Not Good.

Concerning Pages; i then opened Pages and tried to Open a Pages Document from The File Menu,
Curious; This Worked.
Not only did this Work, but from then on; All Pages Documents Opened Appropriately.
Wait on that.
Pages will not open any of The Templates !

Then i discovered that The Big Bang Games would open a little, But not Completely.
As soon i selected a Game Option, They Would Crash.
Which is Completely Crazy, These games came with The Box when it was running Tiger !
What could have happened to make them stop working now ! ???

Also: In The System Preferences; The Language & Text Pane will Not Open at all. If i click on it, and then after waiting a minute and click again, The System Preferences Pane will Crash.
This also applies to The Keyboard Pane.
Anything that made The System Preferences stop working; That must have been very Kooky !

Mastermind reported that it required 'Rosetta' to work. i then installed Rosetta, but Mastermind is still not working.

QuickTime, Which DOES Work now, will not open .AVI’s, The format that my Nikon Camera Stores Videos in. The Other Option is PAL, which i think is a European Format ( ??? )
The QT that got from Apple just a day or two ago was something like v.9, which DID NOT Work with my Big Box, But v.7 that came with SnowL- DOES - - ! - - AND It also opens AVIs !!!
And Now v.10 is opening The AVI that i have ( ??? ) ! ???
i’m SURE that it was not opening it earlier this morning !!!

Gawd! i hate computers !

i can still watch all films with SpaceBar Preview.

iTunes will not Play any of The Movies.
iTunes will not connect to my iPod ( !!! )
Image Capture WILL connect to The iPod and Download Images from it.

i tried Resetting the iPod and then connecting to iTunes, but it still won't connect.
It would seem that the latest iPod OS update allows it to Start Up without A Host Computer
( ??? )
All The Apps and Other Geegaw in iTunes for The iPod are apparently still intact.
It always seemed to me that all the Apps for the iPod should work through iTunes ( ? )
But they never did.
Also; Magazines bought from The NewsStand should be stored in The Books Folder !

The Services Menu in The Application Name Menu is Not Working. Nothing comes up.

iPhoto is Not working, and when i tried to reload it from The iLife Disk, It Refused to Load.
It later reported that it can't work with this OS ( X.6.3 ) as it Needs at least X.6.6 ( !!! )

i just discovered that in The Software Update Log, It still contains the Uploads of X.6.6 !
Will it allow this Update to be Performed Again ( ??? )

So i'm thinking; Will everything be fixed if i get on the Intertube and update everything ( ??? )
( i don’t have an Intertube connection at home, i have to go to The Library ! )

Many of these basic functions should be working though !!!
- - -

There were so many things going wrong that i decided to Save all my Documents, Projects & Applications to my Backup HardDrive ( Henrietta ) and then ReStore my Entire MacBook HardDrive ( CheeseCake ) from TimeMachine.
Regretfully; i neglected to remember that several ‘recent’ items are stored outside Documents & Projects. i really should put everything is Projects so that i don’t forget, but they seem ‘non-projectee’ ( ! ??? )

Restoring The Entire HardDrive is a little more complicated that you might expect !
At first i thought that i could do this through Time-Machine, And i started doing this, then i suddenly realized that i should have saved some things that were changed since The ReInstallation of SnowLeopard, So i stopped The Restore Process and Saved those items to Henrietta, Then i experienced this ‘epiphany’ that i should use The ‘Help’ menu to ask how to Restore a Whole HardDrive. Even though The Help Menu is hardly ever helpful, my angels were very insistent that i look this up.

It turns out that The Process is somewhat counterintuitive.
Insert your StartUp Installation CD for SnowLeopard.
Double Click on Install
Select The Utilities Menu and Click on ReStart
Select The Language
Go back to The Utilities Menu and Click on Restore from BackUp
Select Henrietta and Select The Date & Time of The BackUp Version.
Wait & Wait & Wait.

After doing this; And Installing QuickTime(s ( Both v.10 & v.7 ) which came with The SnowLeopard Installation Disk, Which i saved separately from The SnowLeopard ReInstall - - That now works.
i also reinstalled a bunch of other Utilities that i never understood what they did.

Why would SnowLeopard include BOTH QTv.10 & QTv.7 ???
i also distinctly recall buying QTv.? Pro sometime ago, but it has since disappeared ?
i seem to recall that it featured some functions that QTv.10 Does Not Have !
ugh.

One very annoying ‘feature’ was that after i did The Restore, The TimeMachine made a New Full Backup of my Entire HardDrive ( CheeseCake ) Even though this was an exact duplicate of The Backup that it just got from Henrietta. !!!
The Sour Tragedy of that was that it bit a 150GB chunk out of Henrietta !

There are already huge chunks of Redundancy that i need to resolve someday soon ??? ( ! )

But.
Apparently; A Restoration from TimeMachine does NOT restore everything exactly The Way it Was !!!
The Kookiest thing was that many of most recently modified TextEdit Documents were changed to Pages for Opening !
And when i tried to ‘Change All’ back to TextEdit, this would not work.
All The effected Documents had to be changed back one by one.

Note:
DO NOT TRY TO OPEN & EXAMINE THE BACKUP FOLDER
ON YOUR BACKUP DRIVE FOR TIME-MACHINE !
It was scary when The Whole Desktop flipped Off. ( ? )

Another very curious omission from The Backup was that my iTunes Permission Connection to my iPod was Broken, and iTunes refused to Sync 29 Apps to The iPod and Deleted them from The iPod !!!
ugh.

The only real casualty was that i’d just downloaded a bunch of stuff from The Intertube The day before this fiasco, and it was somehow lost. i have a Time Machine Backup from That day, but The files i was looking for were not there.
Curiously; Some Changes to Other Documents that could only have been made by referring to these new files, Were Saved, So that The Backup must have taken place after they were on CheeseCake ( ??? )

- - -
A day or two later; after making several iMovies, i tried to add some additional, precisely positioned, sound effects with Garageband, and it crashed repeatedly, even after i did all The ‘Optimization’ Tricks ( ? ).
And when it did crash, i took The Whole Computer with it.
There was no using Force Quit on it, as The Finder was inaccessible after The Crash ! ( !!! ) !

ugh.

Gawd! i hate computers !
- - -
Additional Problems when i got online ! ( December 6th )

Managed to get my iPod Synced with The Big Box.

Then noticed that my ‘sidebars’ on my windows weren’t working.
This may or may-not be related to The General Fiasco, as i moved some of those items in The Sidebar to Different Folders, But The Way that The BigBox handled The Errors was very annoying ! ???

( i’m very easily traumatized !!! )