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- - TextEdit freezing and related issues (http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=100839)

TextEdit freezing and related issues

Hello,

I'm having several issues with TextEdit. Whenever I open an existing file (either e.g. from Finder or by first opening TextEdit and doing File, Open...), the application freezes for 2 o 3 minutes until the file actually appears. I can close it by forcing it to quit, or wait until it opens. It happens with every user. I have tried opening both .rtf and .doc files.

TextEdit opens without problems if I launch it directly, but not if I open an existing file.

A related weird issue happens with OpenOffice. I have alread uninstalled it now, but I recall that whenever I launch it directly, either if I choose to begin with a blank new document or open an existing one, a delay of 2 o 3 minutes of freezing occurs. Pages also does a related thing: it opens fine the already existing documents, but launching it directly and choosing to start with a blank document, causes another freeze of some minutes.

I have sincerely no idea of what the problem is. NeoOffice works perfectly fine.

Thanks!

PS: I have a 2 ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook, 4 GB RAM.

1) I presume these documents are on your MacBook's hard drive? Or are they on a network-mounted drive?

2) Launch the "Console" application (under /Applications/Utilities) and look for relevant error messages. Note that messages are labeled with the date & time so you can use that to locate the part of the log to look at. Copy & paste the relevant messages back here so we can see them.
Be sure to look at system.log as well as the console log (Use the "Logs" button (top-left) to see the various logs available - note that you will probably need to be an "admin" user to see the system.log)

3) Does the problem occur with all existing documents? E.g. what if you create a new document, and then save it without typing in anything (i.e. create an empty document) - does the problem occur if you quit TextEdit and then re-launch it and try to open that empty document?

1) yes, the documents are my MacBook's hard drive.

2) Console doesn't tell me anything new. Only a new entry appears when I force-quit TextEdit, but not before:

18/04/09 21:32:48 com.apple.launchd[84] ([0x0-0x47047].com.apple.TextEdit[467]) Exited: Terminated

3) I have tried saving a new document without typing anything. It actually makes TextEdit freeze when I save it*, not to mention when I try to open it later again. Same thig if I do type something.

I didn't mention it before, but if it's relevant, this is OS X 10.5.6.

Maybe the problem is with your hard drive.
Try doing "Repair Disk" (different from "Repair Disk Permissions"!) in Disk Utility when booted from the Install CD/DVD. I.e. you restart from the Install CD/DVD, then run the version of Disk Utility that is available from one of the menus there (in 10.4.x, it's the Utilities menu), then go to the First Aid tab, select your boot drive, and click "Repair Disk" (NOT Repair Disk Permissions). If Repair Disk finds any errors at all, repeat the repair until no errors are found.
See this Apple doc:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

It still doesn't work. I checked the hard drive with the disk utility and it doesn't give me any error at all.

I can't exactly recall, but not long ago I upgraded the MacBook memory. I took off the 1 GB it came with and replaced it with 4 GB (brand new). Everything else works perfectly, and they are well recognized by the system. I don't really know if this problem occured before that, but it seems weird that it might affect the behaviour of 2 o 3 specific text editors.

Launch Font Book and open its prefs.
Does this box have a checkmark?

[√] Automatic font activation

If so, see if turning that off helps.

Tried that too. First, I didn't have FontBook installed. Anyway, I installed it, but there is no such option in my preferences!.

FontBook also took a few minutes to load, but at least with a "Loading fonts" or something like that warning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lguerb (Post 530019)

I didn't have FontBook installed.

FontBook is installed as part of a standard OS X installation. Have you deleted stuff from your OS, or customised your installation in some way? Perhaps you have removed some other vital components?

Create a brand new user account. Does the problem persist? if so, then the problem is at the OS level. If not, then the problem is a user setting or other problem within your old user account's Library folder.

The problem happens with every user.

I don't know what FontBook is then. I did have to download and install it. Where is it located in a standard OS X installation? Maybe I just missed it.

FontBook is Apple's font management utility. It normally is found in /Applications/Utilities/

Pss, I didn't find it in the first place because my OS Language is not English. Anyway, I do uncheck that option but the problem persists.

I have confirmed that the same problem happens with Pages and Numbers (not with Keynote).

Can you use TextWrangler? That way you can have a text editor and your office suite NeoOffice so you should be able to have a working program for everything, even if it is not your preferred program.

I have a feeling it is the drive as well. Disk utility can do a good job, but there should be some utilities on your OS X disc that can test the drive. It's possible that the problem is not discoverable by Disk Utility because the disk is in use running OS X. Doing it from the install disk (or techtool, etc) should eliminate that and allow the disk to be tested without other things going on.

Do the documents take longer than normal loading in NeoOffice? Do these documents have special characters outside of english characters? Can you copy a problematic document to another location (network share or flash drive) and see if you have the same issues?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cheech'i (Post 530317)

Can you use TextWrangler? That way you can have a text editor and your office suite NeoOffice so you should be able to have a working program for everything, even if it is not your preferred program.

This is not a good solution to the problem.

It may be revealing to reproduce the issue with TextEdit and sample it. You can take a sample of an application with Activity Monitor.

It's good to solve the problem, but in the meantime if he needs to continue working and this is a usable workaround, the problem can be solved at a less hectic pace.

Well, I have no problem using NeoOffice and another text editor, but the problem just bothers me because I know there is a problem :P

NeoOffice works just fine, it loads easily any document. And they don't have any special characters, I reproduce the problem with several files, even new files, blank files, files with just "hello", etc.

What other disk utilities could I use, besides Mac OS X Disk Utility?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lguerb (Post 529928)

I can't exactly recall, but not long ago I upgraded the MacBook memory. I took off the 1 GB it came with and replaced it with 4 GB (brand new).

You should check the RAM with 'memtest':
http://www.memtestosx.org/
Be sure to do the long test - several hours or overnight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hayne (Post 530431)

You should check the RAM with 'memtest':
http://www.memtestosx.org/
Be sure to do the long test - several hours or overnight.

I took the test as the installation process told me, with "memtest all 2". It took about 7500 seconds (about 2 hours), and everything was ok, with

"All test passed"

as the final message. Is there a longer test?

What about if it's not the memory? Any other ideas?

I will keep trying for a few days, otherwise I'll just backup everything and do a full reinstall to see if the problem is hardware related or software related.

PS: I discovered new instances of the problem. E.g., trying to save a song in Garage Band, or trying to print in Safari (I didn't try printing in other application). The problem is the same: it freezes for some minutes until it finally does what it has do to. These are probably not new, I just never tried them before.

Quote:

What about if it's not the memory? Any other ideas?

Did you skip my post entirely?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikey-San (Post 530643)

Did you skip my post entirely?

Activity Monitor doesn't give me any information. When TextEdit is working fine (e.g. before saving), I look at the monitor, then pres save in TextEdit and everything remains the same (except for the ¨Not responding¨label on the corresponding process).

Quote:

Originally Posted by lguerb (Post 530648)

I said sample the hung app with Activity Monitor.

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/3...cture2b.th.png

The sample log may be revealing.

Ok, I don't know anything about this, but the log (I sample the process when it is not responding) is the following.

Code:

Sampling process 175 for 1 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples

Sampling completed, processing symbols...

Analysis of sampling TextEdit (pid 175) every 1 millisecond

Call graph:

    417 Thread_2507

      417 0x1df6

        417 NSApplicationMain

          417 -[NSApplication run]

            417 -[NSApplication sendEvent:]

              417 -[NSWindow sendEvent:]

                417 -[NSControl mouseDown:]

                  417 -[NSButtonCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:]

                    417 -[NSCell trackMouse:inRect:ofView:untilMouseUp:]

                      417 -[NSCell _sendActionFrom:]

                        417 -[NSControl sendAction:to:]

                          417 -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:]

                            417 -[NSSavePanel(NSSavePanelRuntime) ok:]

                              417 -[NSSavePanel(NSSavePanelRuntime) dismissWindow:]

                                417 -[NSApplication endSheet:returnCode:]

                                  417 -[NSSavePanel(NSSavePanelRuntime) _didEndSheet:returnCode:contextInfo:]

                                    417 -[NSDocument _savePanelWasPresented:withResult:inContext:]

                                      417 -[NSDocument saveToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:delegate:didSaveSelector:contextInfo:]

                                        417 -[NSDocument _saveToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:delegate:didSaveSelector:contextInfo:]

                                          417 0x8927

                                            417 -[NSDocument saveToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:error:]

                                              417 -[NSDocument writeSafelyToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:error:]

                                                417 -[NSDocument _writeSafelyToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:error:]

                                                  417 -[NSDocument writeToURL:ofType:forSaveOperation:originalContentsURL:error:]

                                                    417 0x8b51

                                                      417 0x8fe1

                                                        417 0x9a59

                                                          417 -[NSPrintInfo paperSize]

                                                            417 -[NSPrintInfo(NSManagedAttributes) _objectForAttributeKey:]

                                                              417 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _pageFormatForGetting]

                                                                417 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _createDefaultOrUnflattenPageFormatIfNecessary]

                                                                  417 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _printSessionForGetting]

                                                                    417 PMCreateSession

                                                                      417 PJCCreateSession(OpaquePMPrintSession**)

                                                                        417 OpaquePMPrintSession::OpaquePMPrintSession(OpaquePMPrintSession*)

                                                                          417 OpaquePMPrintSession::SetCurrentPrinter()

                                                                            417 PJCGetCurrentPrinter

                                                                              417 CUPSPrinter::CUPSPrinter()

                                                                                417 OpaquePMPrinter::OpaquePMPrinter()

                                                                                  417 CPLCopyDefaultPrinterName

                                                                                    417 cachedCupsGetDests(cups_dest_s**)

                                                                                      417 cupsGetDests

                                                                                        417 httpConnectEncrypt

                                                                                          417 httpReconnect

                                                                                            417 connect$UNIX2003

                                                                                              417 connect$UNIX2003

    417 Thread_2603

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 PrivateMPEntryPoint

            417 TSystemNotificationTask::SystemNotificationTaskProc(void*)

              417 CFRunLoopRun

                417 CFRunLoopRunSpecific

                  417 mach_msg

                    417 mach_msg_trap

                      417 mach_msg_trap

    417 Thread_2703

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 PrivateMPEntryPoint

            417 TFSEventsNotificationTask::FSEventsNotificationTaskProc(void*)

              417 CFRunLoopRun

                417 CFRunLoopRunSpecific

                  417 mach_msg

                    417 mach_msg_trap

                      417 mach_msg_trap

    417 Thread_2803

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 PrivateMPEntryPoint

            417 TNodeSyncTask::SyncTaskProc(void*)

              417 MPWaitOnQueue

                417 TSWaitOnConditionTimedRelative

                  417 TSWaitOnCondition

                    417 pthread_cond_wait$UNIX2003

                      417 __semwait_signal

                        417 __semwait_signal

    417 Thread_2903

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 kevent

            417 kevent

    417 Thread_2a03

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 select$DARWIN_EXTSN

            417 select$DARWIN_EXTSN

    417 Thread_2c03

      417 thread_start

        417 _pthread_start

          417 __NSThread__main__

            417 -[NSThread main]

              417 -[NSUIHeartBeat _heartBeatThread:]

                415 usleep$UNIX2003

                  415 __semwait_signal

                    415 __semwait_signal

                1 -[NSUIHeartBeat _heartBeatThread:]

                1 objc_msgSend

                  1 objc_msgSend

    408 Thread_2b03

      408 thread_start

        408 _pthread_start

          408 PrivateMPEntryPoint

            408 TFolderSizeTask::FolderSizeTaskProc(void*)

              408 MPWaitOnQueue

                408 TSWaitOnConditionTimedRelative

                  408 pthread_cond_timedwait_relative_np

                    408 _pthread_cond_wait

                      408 semaphore_timedwait_signal_trap

                        408 semaphore_timedwait_signal_trap



Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):

        7       _pthread_start

        7       thread_start



Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):

        mach_msg_trap        834

        __semwait_signal        832

        connect$UNIX2003        417

        kevent        417

        select$DARWIN_EXTSN        417

        semaphore_timedwait_signal_trap        408

Sample analysis of process 175 written to file /dev/stdout

Did you take that while opening a file?

No, that was trying to save a new file with one word in it. The log for opening a file is the following.

Code:

Sampling process 231 for 1 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples

Sampling completed, processing symbols...

Analysis of sampling TextEdit (pid 231) every 1 millisecond

Call graph:

    651 Thread_2507

      651 0x1df6

        651 NSApplicationMain

          651 -[NSApplication run]

            651 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:]

              651 _DPSNextEvent

                651 AEProcessAppleEvent

                  651 aeProcessAppleEvent

                    651 dispatchEventAndSendReply(AEDesc const*, AEDesc*)

                      651 aeDispatchAppleEvent(AEDesc const*, AEDesc*, unsigned long, unsigned char*)

                        651 _NSAppleEventManagerGenericHandler

                          651 -[NSAppleEventManager dispatchRawAppleEvent:withRawReply:handlerRefCon:]

                            651 -[NSApplication(NSAppleEventHandling) _handleCoreEvent:withReplyEvent:]

                              651 -[NSApplication(NSAppleEventHandling) _handleAEOpenDocuments:]

                                651 -[NSApplication _doOpenFiles:]

                                  651 -[NSApplication _doOpenFile:ok:tryTemp:]

                                    651 -[NSDocumentController(NSInternal) _openFile:]

                                      651 0x9e04

                                        651 -[NSDocumentController openDocumentWithContentsOfURL:display:error:]

                                          651 -[NSDocumentController makeDocumentWithContentsOfURL:ofType:error:]

                                            651 -[NSDocument initWithContentsOfURL:ofType:error:]

                                              651 0xa07c

                                                651 0xac35

                                                  651 0xb039

                                                    651 -[NSPrintInfo paperSize]

                                                      651 -[NSPrintInfo(NSManagedAttributes) _objectForAttributeKey:]

                                                        651 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _pageFormatForGetting]

                                                          651 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _createDefaultOrUnflattenPageFormatIfNecessary]

                                                            651 -[NSPrintInfo(NSInternal) _printSessionForGetting]

                                                              651 PMCreateSession

                                                                651 PJCCreateSession(OpaquePMPrintSession**)

                                                                  651 OpaquePMPrintSession::OpaquePMPrintSession(OpaquePMPrintSession*)

                                                                    651 OpaquePMPrintSession::SetCurrentPrinter()

                                                                      651 PJCGetCurrentPrinter

                                                                        651 CUPSPrinter::CUPSPrinter()

                                                                          651 OpaquePMPrinter::OpaquePMPrinter()

                                                                            651 CPLCopyDefaultPrinterName

                                                                              651 cachedCupsGetDests(cups_dest_s**)

                                                                                651 cupsGetDests

                                                                                  651 httpConnectEncrypt

                                                                                    651 httpReconnect

                                                                                      651 connect$UNIX2003

                                                                                        651 connect$UNIX2003



Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):



Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):

        connect$UNIX2003        651

Sample analysis of process 231 written to file /dev/stdout

The document system that TextEdit is based on (which some other apps also use) is attempting to contact a printer and waiting for that to finish. Do you have a printer/printers set up? How are they configured? Connected at all? Reachable? Someone with more patience for printers (I have none anymore) might be able to help here. :)

Well, thanks Mikey-San!

I think I know what happens now. I had a bunch of printers configured some time ago, because I used the computer at job. Now I changed my job location, so those printers are no longer available. That must be the problem.

However, in System Preferences, no printers are configured, and it also freezes for some minutes before showing the Printers section :)

Edit: Solved. Just removed the file in /etc/cups.conf containing the printers server.

Try removing those printers, restarting, and opening a problematic document in TextEdit.