One of the most pervasive causes of crashes in Safari involves Adobe Flash content, in part because of the widespread use of Flash in banner ads. As reported by one poster to Apple's Discussion boards, Espen S.:

"For the third time Safari has crashed while I was writing an email at Yahoo. The message that popped up after Safari disappeared stated that it probably had to do with the Flash plugin. The only update I have done, apart from Apples own, is to download and install the latest Flash player from Adobe (9.0.115.0)."

This creates a situation where Safari will seem to randomly crash in the middle of browsing as well.

The latest Flash update, the release was intended to tackle many security vulnerabilities in previous versions of Flash. However, the crashes that are occurring seem to indicate problems with this new code. Crash reports indicate security routines are to blame for the crashes. Excerpts from a typical crash report:

• Thread 7 Crashed:
• 1 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x17199b5d Flash_EnforceLocalSecurity + 98677
• 2 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x16eb2406 0x16dd6000 + 902150
• 6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x90ec6c55 _pthread_start + 321

Fix: In some cases, downgrading Flash to a different version can resolve this issue. We recommend version v47. To downgrade, follow these instructions:

1. Go to this page and download "Flash Player 9."
2. When you open the package, open the "9r47 Folder". There, select flashplayer9r47_ub_mac.dmg.zip (flashplayer9r47_max.zip is for PPC only) for machine. This installs Flash 9.0.47.
3. Reset Safari (clear out all cache and cookie information)

In other cases, you may ned to remove Flip4Mac (Microsoft WMV components for QT). Some users have reported that removing Flip4Mac quicktime components have stopped the Flash-related crashes.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Applications won't launch Some users are unable to launch any Microsoft Office 2008 applications after applying the SP1 (12.0.1) update. In some cases, the setup assistant repeatedly launches in place of the intended application.

One reader writes:

"After installing SP1 for Microsoft Office, I can no longer launch any of the applications. Every time I try to launch Word, etc. - the Setup Assistant runs. I go through the assistant, close it and try to launch the app again and the setup assistant starts up again. I have restarted the computer. No effect - I get stuck in a setup assistant loop. Is anyone else seeing this?"

Fix: If you are experiencing this problem, delete the following files:

• ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist
• /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

then launch the problematic application(s) and enter your Office 2008 serial number.

Double-clicking documents doesn't open them Other users have reported an issue in which double-clicking documents to trigger an Office application launch no longer works.

One reader writes:

"Is it just me, or has the SP1 update for Office 2008 broken the ability to open an Office application and load a document by double-clicking on a document? Since this morning's update, double-clicking on either Word or Excel files launches the corresponding application, but fails to load the document. Rebooting or rebuilding the Launch Services database have no effect, nor does repairing the permissions."

MacFixIt reader Louis Hecht reports a similar issue:

"I just downloaded and installed...everything seems to work well except when MSWord is executed by choosing an existing document, does not open the (intended) document, but instead opens a new document."

• sudo update_prebinding -debug -root / -force

You'll be required to enter an administrator password.

Applications will not update Some users have reported a problem in which the 12.1 update fails to apply to some Office applications. In these cases, your best bet is to delete the entire Office 2008 folder from /Applications, reinstall from the original media and re-attempt the update.

Keychain issues We've received some reports of keychain issues after the 12.1 update. One reader writes:

"I installed successfully (can you imagine?) Office 2008 SP1. Immediately, Entourage 2008 began to require that I allow incoming.isp.net access to keychain so that my accounts can access my email accounts. I clicked on “Always Allow” but have to do this every time the program or my selection attempts send/receive."

If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let ue know.

Near the end of yesterday's press release announcing Microsoft Office 2008 SP1 (12.1) is a statement indicating that Visual Basic will be returning to the suite with its next major revision.

Erik Schwiebert, Software Design Lead at Microsoft Corporation in the Macintosh Business Unit, explains in a blog post that the release will be "some time before 2012":

"So, if you have a dire need for Visual Basic, you can continue to run Mac Office 2004 (it will even run side-by-side with Office 2008) and we’re publicly committing to VB as good (maybe even better, if things go well) in the next version. My team is responsible for that reintegration, and I’ve been meeting frequently with a number of people as we’ve planned exactly what we’re doing and how we're bringing VB back."

Microsoft Office 2008 does not include Visual Basic capabilities in any form. There is no execution of newly or previously compiled macros, and the macros cannot be edited in Office 2008. Company representatives, including Schwiebert, have defended this tack in a series of blog postings.

As such, Office 2004 with the addition of an official converter for Open XML documents is currently the most cross-platform compatible version of Office in existence. Users are able to run an Office 2007 for Windows document with Visual Basic macros through the Mac OS X translator and then open the document in Office 2004 for Mac OS X and retain the macros.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

After a brief maintenance hiatus, the MacFixIt forums are back and better than ever. Among the enhancements:

• Preview Post uses AJAX instead of loading a new page.
• You can choose to receive email notification of all replies to any topic that you've added to your Watch Lists, even if the replies aren't to your posts. (In fact, you needn't even have posted in the thread at all.)
• Quick and easy access to your profile, preferences, watch lists, and post list via My Stuff in the Forums navigation bar on any page.
• Choice of "Topics Created" or "All Posts" when viewing your own or someone else's post list.
• More parameter choices on the Search page, including the return of "All Forums."

[Tuesday, May 13th]

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 (which installs Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_05) is causing issues for some TiVo users who have lost their ability to see TiVos on the local network.

One poster to Roxio's support forums writes:

"So my TiVoToGo stopped seeing my DVR and all programs already downloaded to the local computer. Been working fine for months. I'm using the latest java from Apple"

A MacFixIt reader corroborates the issue:

"I have duplicated his results with my Series2 TiVo and my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.5.2 w/ all updates).  Manually setting the Java Preferences to use the 1.5 version of Java restored the ability to use TiVo Transfer properly."

We previously reported that, per Apple's documentation, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 1 (which installs Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_05) does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 5.0 or change the default version of Java, so it shouldn't (theoretically) be the cause of Java-related issues if you haven't made the switch in Java Preferences. However, several users are now reporting that installation of the Java update does indeed change the default Java version, and hence causing some issues with Java applets and potentially resulting in other problems as well.

Again, you can control the version of Java used by your system with the Java Preferences application in /Utilities/Java/. Switching back to the old Java installation, J2SE 5.0, may resolve these issues.

Previous coverage:

• Java update for Mac OS X 10.5.x: default version; E*Trade fix
• Java update for Mac OS X 10.5.x problems
• Apple releases Java update for Mac OS X 10.5.x

[Tuesday, May 13th]

Users are reporting an in issue in which copying either large files (or sometimes large numbers of smaller files) from an external drive (USB or Firewire) fails with a hang. When this problem occurs, the target file may have a size of zero KB, indicating no data was transferred. This also occurs when FAT32 drives are attached to a Time Capsule device, causing the Time Capsule to crash and require manual restarting.

As described by Apple Discussions poster Greg Freeman

"I am trying to copy some large files my itunes music library 22G from an external mac formatted USB drive to my G5 and the process keeps stalling at various points , usually after a couple of gigs have been transferred. Clicking on the stop copy button does nothing and the only way to interrupt the failed copy is to relaunch the finder.The files were copied onto the disc from the same mac with no problems. "

The workaround for this problem involves ensuring that the drive is formatted to "Mac OS Extended", and not "FAT32". While drives formatted to FAT32 load and ostensibly work well with Mac OS X, there are apparently some problems with how OS X handles large files in this format. Most external drives that are advertised to work with both Windows and Mac are formatted to FAT32 (Drives may appear to be "Mac Formatted" but will in fact be FAT32); however, for best performance and compatibility it is recommended to reformat them to NTFS for windows usage, or HFS+ for Macintosh uses. The drawback to this is the loss of some native compatibility: Windows cannot read or write to HFS+ without third-party software, and OS X cannot write to NTFS but it can read it. 

If a user is using a Time Capsule device, then formatting to HFS+ should help the situation as the Time Capsule device will handle all the I/O for the drive and will allow Windows machines to write to the drive.

[Monday, May 12th]

Several users are experiencing an issue in which kernel panics occur when Time Machine backups are being pushed to Time Capsule units or, in fewer cases, locally attached drives. Initial analysis reveals that the sparsebundle, used to by Time Machine to store backed up data, is somehow becoming corrupt.

In some cases, deleting the sparsebundle on the Time Capsule seems to help (temporarily), but the problem leading to the sparsebundle getting corrupted in the first place still remains. Unfortunately a true fix will probably require a software/firmware update from Apple.

One user claims that mounting the sparsebundle in the finder causes  the system to kernel panic:

"I also tried mounting the sparsebundle by finder, and the computer  did in fact crash."

However, another user, posting to this Apple Discussions thread, claims his machine is able to mount the sparsebundle via Time Machine during the backups and he is able to browser them  in the Finder, but the machine still crashes.

"Jazzhead" writes: "...when a backup starts, and the drive appears mounted on the  desktop, I can open it, navigate into my backup series, and see a list  of items that have dates and times as identifiers..."

Some users are able to remove "inprogress" file and get the backups working again. This indicates  there may be two errors at play: one being the mounting of the drive for and the other being with the access of  corrupt backups on the drive.

If you are experiencing this issue, try removing the most  recent individual backups, or ditching the whole sparsebundle and starting the backups over again.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.