A couple of days back I let the Mac’s Software Update feature install the 10.2.4 update to OSX. Everything seemed fine until I rebooted last night. This morning, I tried to bring up Excel: it crashed as soon at it displayed an empty spreadsheet. The log showed a problem in some SSL library. Sighing at the reliability of Microsoft software, I decided instead to print my slides for this weekend. Keynote crashed printing up the print dialog. Powerpoint did the same. I tried to ssh in to my Linux box. Ssh core-dumped.
I went on the web: there was one article on the Microsoft site about Excel crashing, but it didn’t seem to apply. Apply had a few notes about uninstalling the print drivers: I did that but it made no difference.
Finally in desperation I drove over to the local Apple store. I was somewhat disappointed that the helpful guy behind the Genius Bar didn’t really seem surprised. After running some diagnostics which found nothing particularly wrong, his suggestions:
- Don’t use the System Update version of the OSX upgrade: install the full Combo Update instead.
- Otherwise, reinstall the OS.
Sound familiar?
Fortunately, a 77Mb download of the Combo Update seemed to fix the problem, and I’m back being able to print and ssh. Still, I was hoping for a slightly less blunt tool than reinstallation to fix the problem.
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