Indesign CS5 Crashes almost immediatly on 10.8.2

[JustUp_]

I am not sure when it started as I only use ID every 4 months but it now just after starting it. Things that make it crash:

- Choosing open from the start screen

- Choose a template and then doing something like save or Cammand-D

I have tried resetting prefs, repair permissions, the fixing SING process (it came up repeatedly in searches for similar issues).

I am using InDesign 7.0.4.553 (7040) and Mountain Lion 10.8.2.

Any help would be appreciated as I only have two weeks before I need to submit my folio for uni which I alway do in InDesign.

Crash report is here: http://pastebin.com/46isnjjk

[BillGladstone]

Similar Problem:

Migrated CS 5.5 from 2006 MBPro with 10.6.8 to 2012 MBPro with 10.8.2

InDesign 5.5 will not start.  Crashes on initialization every time.

Illustrator 5.1 works.  Director 15.5 OK (yes, I still use Director) now that license issue resolved.

Came here looking for solutions.  Yet to find one.  Software Updates complete.  Reintstall is next step.  All for now...

[JustUp_]

Well I am still runnning on the trial of CS6. Not sure what I can do after that - I will visit Apple to see if they can shed any light on what to try.

[Peter Spier]

Bill,

Not sure waht you meant by "migrated" but if you meant you used the migration tool, uninstall, run the clean tool (CS Cleaner Tool for installation problems | CCM, CS6, CS5.5, CS5, CS4, CS3) and then reinstall.

If you still have problems, post your crash report on pastebin.com and put a link here. We might get lucky and recognize the cause.

[JustUp_]

Any more advice for me?

[Peter Spier]

I'm afraid I don't have any more ideas based on the crash you posted initially. I wish I did.

[flaming1]

John briefly touched on RAM somewhere in this thread. Is there an outside chance some of the RAM is faulty?

We had a run of trouble with RAM causing a few of our Macs to crash fairly regularly, but it only happened in very specific situations within Photoshop - and not situations that were particularly RAM hungry either. Replacing the RAM solved the problem for good on all the affected machines.

I may be wrong but I believe RAM can become faulty - it's not necessarily either faulty or not from the start.

John notes that Indesign can't see more than 4Gb anyway, so depending on your RAM configuration, perhaps pull out a stick at a time and see if that makes any difference?

I think John and Peter have pretty much covered everything it could be. You've done a clean install of both the OS and CS, so what's left?

[John Hawkinson]

BillGladstone:

Similar Problem:

Migrated CS 5.5 from 2006 MBPro with 10.6.8 to 2012 MBPro with 10.8.2

InDesign 5.5 will not start.  Crashes on initialization every time.

Illustrator 5.1 works.  Director 15.5 OK (yes, I still use Director) now that license issue resolved.

Came here looking for solutions.  Yet to find one.  Software Updates complete.  Reintstall is next step.  All for now...

Similar problems are often not similar. Please upload your crash report to http://pastebin.com/ and post a link here.

JustUp!, all I can suggest is you go back to 10.7. Did we say that explicitly? Not sure. I realize that is not easy.

due to "that 10.8 iCloud garbage."

Really? I realise you are doing your best to offer helpful advice John, but quoting someone's irrational dislike of a product helps nobody.

Sorry, flaming1, but I stand by my rendition of my colleague's comments, and I think he is correct and hardly irrational, and I find the mention of them to be relevant and topical here. There are technical reasons why the iCloud integration in 10.8 has the potential to break many applications, and his contention was, with a bit of realistic grit, that it is potentially implicated, even though it may not have been the root cause here (though, I would say, we really do not know!) — but that doesn't make it wrong. The intent is to express that from a developer's perspective, iCloud causes problems.

Returning to the technical:

John briefly touched on RAM somewhere in this thread. Is there an outside chance some of the RAM is faulty?

...

John notes that Indesign can't see more than 4Gb anyway, so depending on your RAM configuration, perhaps pull out a stick at a time and see if that makes any difference?

It's possible but I think it is unlikely. You could try that, and the standard approach is to run Memtest86 overnight on your machine. But clearly we are into the unlikely, so I would not rule anything out.

[JustUp_]

RAM won't be the issue unless it's an issue with Indesign freaking out due to too much ... that would be a little unusual but not the first time I've seen it happen... but I go beyond using 16GB quite often (several VMs at once) and nothing else ever goes pop. Things like icloud, dropbox and box.net are possibles because it is related to the file dialogue but I have done every I could to disable those with no positive effect.

[flaming1]

Sorry, flaming1, but I stand by my rendition of my colleague's comments, and I think he is correct and hardly irrational, and I find the mention of them to be relevant and topical here. There are technical reasons why the iCloud integration in 10.8 has the potential to break many applications, and his contention was, with a bit of realistic grit, that it is potentially implicated, even though it may not have been the root cause here (though, I would say, we really do not know!) — but that doesn't make it wrong. The intent is to express that from a developer's perspective, iCloud causes problems.

Fair enough John, I'm not qualified to debate the technical ins and outs of iCloud, but using an adjective like 'garbage' proves beyond reasonable doubt that the original comment was  based pretty strongly on a personal dislike.

The fact that he is a developer carries no sway whatsoever. Developers can be just as much affected by irrational prejudices as anyone else. He may well believe that iCloud could be involved because of his knowledge of it's inner workings, but with all due respect he's as much in the dark as we all are re the OPs issue. Millions of iCloud users would disagree with his use of adjective.

As far as the RAM goes, we were told by many experts (some of whom were developers, plus Apple and Adobe Certified experts) that it was unlikely or impossible that it was a RAM issue affecting us in Photoshop. However it turned out to be exactly that.

JustUp! - it was NOT a case of the amount of RAM being used, simply a small trigger that somehow tipped everything over. Still unlikely, but given the simple task of taking out a bit of RAM, surely worth a go.

We also ran memory tests on the machines and they reported no issues. When we eventually replaced the RAM however, the manufacturer did confirm that the original RAM they supplied us was faulty.

[JustUp_]

Yes, I understand all about RAM ... in my former incarnation I was who server engineers came too for the ffinal point of escalation. Memtests are generally a waste of time unless your RAM is really faulty and then you will see your OS flop all over the place. But given the software I run and the fact everything else is rock solid I can be 99% certain it's not RAM. It can be the amount of RAM due to an unexpected addressing space issue ... we've seen this a few times where old software suddenly meets larger than tested amounts of RAM. But well written software should never hit such an issue and the OS is more likely to be a culprit.

On the opinions of developers, having also managed a few hundred of them in my time, they tend to be riddled with all kinds of conspiracy theories about computer hardware, operating systems and networking. Unfortunately developers deal with all these things in abstracted ways through APIs and really do not generally understand the true nature of the beast.

Anyway, it's been Adobe's attitude over supporting a recent product on an OS that they say works that really peeves me. I have complete empathy for people who never pay for their Adobe software now. No respect, no consideration whatsoever. Even Apple supports the last two OSes

[Peter Spier]

I had a bad RAM experience once, too, on a brand new machine. It was long enoght in the past I don't recall the exact details, but everything worked just fine unless I did a particular sequence of operations, and that brought the machine down every single time. We replaced the RAM and never had a problem again.

[flaming1]

JustUp!, I fully understand your frustration and it is unfortunate that no-one here has been able to help you. It's not from a lack of trying on their part. People on these forums are the best resource out there in my opinion.

I acknowledge Adobe's support can be incredibly frustrating and unhelpful, and bordering on outright stupid on occasion. I have experienced this first hand more than once. However, none of what you are experiencing would justify anyone pirating Adobe's software, or empathy for those that do.

The way I read your comment it doesn't seem that you are intending to pirate Adobe's software yourself, but I still say that you should not have any empathy for people that do just because of the issue you are facing. It's theft, plain and simple and there is no justification for that.

[JustUp_]

To be clear I have no problem with any help I received here on the forums ... only when I called Adobe was I shocked by how painful that was and how incredibly unhelpful they were. I empathise now with those that pirate Adobe software in just the same way we all cheer on Robin Hood! Adobe software is, by present standards, expensive (I have been in IT a long time so you don't need to tell me about how expensive all such software used to be) and I just expect a little more from them in the way of support. I have been disappointed with glitches in Acrobat, Photoshop and now InDesign that relate to pretty common stuff. For the money their software and their support is just a really poor effort.

[JustUp_]

Yes. But it's not RAM.

[Peter Spier]

Perhaps not, but it might be worth humoring flaming 1 and removing half the RAM and giving it a whirl, then trying with the other half removed, and see if that has any different result. That's pretty simple compared to some of the other hoops you've jumped through up to now.

[JustUp_]

Actually no it wouldn't ... because it's more likely to be a design, timing, spec issue which means generally one stick will behave the same as two. Also since I am away from home I don't have my static kit so I am more likey to do static damage to the RAM by stuffing around with it. Swapping RAM is a better test but I don't have any sufficiently high enough spec to test. If it were faulty RAM (rather than poor compatibilty/performance) I would have seen an issue in another app/VM/OS/calculation set. Further, where ID crashes points away from RAM and towards fiesystem, permissions, OS compatibiltity, finder extension issue.

[flaming1]

You seem very sure that it's not RAM, but then so did all the experts we spoke to 🙂

I hope you do find a solution, but it's looking like an upgrade to CS6 is the only thing that works for you at present.

I've got to say likening the scum who steal software to someone who allegedly stole from rich thieves to help people who were being persecuted by those rich thieves is a bit of a stretch!

Yes, Adobe software is expensive, but then so is a Mercedes. It is a users choice to pay what Adobe asks, they're not the only ones in the market. You can't expect Adobe to lower their prices just because someone thinks it is too expensive. To put the cost in perspective, if you're using the software for it's intended purpose - that is professional design - you should be able to easily recover the purchase price in a month or so. After that the software is making money for you.

[JustUp_]

I am a student ... the software makes no money for me. I lived on noodles for a month to afford it the first time. If I pay premium for a Mercedes that is because I know if something goes wrong Mercedes will help fix it rather than tell me it can't be fixed because my car is 2 years old.  It's not a stretch to liken the tale to Robin Hood but it is a metaphor ... just like I said I empathise people not paying for it ... I didn't say I condone it.

So if you could please step off you zealot box and stop ranting on off topic that would be appreciated. It seemed you stepped in here just so you could criticise everyone ... I guess that's to be expected from your chosen ID. Thanking for the flaming ... please troll elsewhere.

If anyone has any other suggestions I would really apprecaite them.

It doesn't matter if it is RAM or it's not ... because I am not in a position to play with the RAM at the moment. So the point is moot. It is my area of expertise and I have left IT because it's boring not because I was rubbish and so I would be my old career on it

[flaming1]

I'm sorry you think you have to sink to name calling. I offered several valid solutions that may or may not have worked. I offered them in a genuine effort to help.

Perhaps a bit of self examination would reveal your off-topic rants. Your software piracy rant was what I replied to.

I'll leave it at that...

And for further clarification, the name of my business that I have run for the last 28+ years is 'Flaming Good' hence the name. Nothing to do with trolling or flaming I'm afraid.

I still wish you the best of luck solving your issue.

[JustUp_]

Your first comment was to criticise John, who, to his credit has taken a lot of time to both provide answers and prompt others to answer. You sir take any criticism to heart and it is reasonable for a person to express their lack faith in iCloud ... and FYI it is a piece of garbage ... I hope it's better when it's a little less beta but at present it certainly means my former team gets a lot of questions about it.... and I beleive I've heard similar verbage from an Apple genius but then Aussies tend to take things a little less seriously.

[Peter Spier]

How about if we all try to stick the the topic of crashing and I won't feel compelled to lock the thread.

Thanks.

[JustUp_]

Nothing better to calm a topic than a threat. Perhaps my issue with all of this is how incredibly unfriendly it's all been.

My ID issue is being looked into at the moment ... I'll report back if anything comes of it.

[Peter Spier]

That wasn't intended as a threat to anyone. It was a request to get back to civility and the topic at hand, and that's my job here. It's policy to close threads that go astray and devolve into name calling. I don't want to do that here because I don't think believe we have finished the useful discussion so I'd like this to go back on track.

[BillGladstone]

RE: Similar problem. 

John - thanks for your reply.

I've posted a crash report: <http://pastebin.com/WCFbKyNE>

Crashes initializing plug-ins. 

Perhaps an uninstall/ reinstall is the place to start.

[Peter Spier]

Bill, you need to update to ID 7.5.3 and remove SING. See SING Removal