I experienced an interesting “problem-solving” this week at the hands of a very competent AppleCare operative. As I thought about it, is was a kinda latter-day iteration of the old ConflictCatcher’s technique of keeping Control Panels and Extensions (remember those?) in proper working order.
The presenting problem was a reprise (or it appeared to be) of one that troubled my iMac/Intel 27 about 3-4 months ago: increasing number of gray, empty, rapidly flashing windows (3-7 in number) when attempting to open something, anything, in the Menu Bar – starting with making a selection in Character Viewer.
When I first appealed to AppleCare, it took considerable time to work my way up to the Third Level, when a very expert young man walked me though a number of alleys-in-the-maze (some of them blind). A solution (involving moving specific items to the DT one-by-one, re-booting, testing, start-over . . .) ultimately was arrived at. Unfortunately I couldn’t readily find my concluding notes, so I asked AppleCare to review them for me.
The very creative young woman who answered, read those notes, questioned me for a couple of minutes and then crafted the slickest solution I could never have imagined.
After making a NEWACCOUNT, rebooting, I then tested to see if the problem was in my Home Folder Library, or (I guess) more generally distributed, the TESTUSER showed it was having no problems. Logged Out
Logged In as meself!
Prepared a new Storage Folder on the DT. Opened ––> HOMEFOLDER ––> LIBRARY ––> PREFERENCES, in which 322 items were residing.
Moved ALL of them to the storage folder, in one fell swoop. . . . very carefully, as you can imagine (if you've ever spilled an abundance of items you were trying to move!) Rebooted. The newly created Prefs were, of course, all (30-35) the Apple variety and the problem was promptly eliminated by their creation.
Opened the Storage Folder and returned all 322 items, with - of course - the alert/warning that there were “new” items in Library.
Easy – simply - “Do Not Replace” – and so only the offending Prefs bit the dust and the problem was solved, w/o agonizing which was which.
Slick.
This may not come as news to you, but I thought it was great.
