"Help" will not launch on Mac OS X 10.3.4

[Chico Burmania]

Friend,
My "HELP" window does not launch when I am off line. The window goes on for a second then vanishes. I have no idea what to do. Can you help?

[kc0arf]

Hi,

Well, the executable is located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Help Viewer.

Guesses:
* Permissions are messed up. Run the Disk Repair and see if the disk needs help. Check for problems, and then check for bad permissions. Mine says: drwxr-xr-x (755 for us Linux people), and is owned by root, and grouped by wheel

* Problem with the preferences file

There is a file called

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpviewer.plist

There might be something wrong in that file. As mine has never broken, and I am not near a test machine to test it out for you, you might consider renaming the file or copying it somewhere else, and then deleting it. This might force the system to regenerate it, just like the good Mac OS 9 days.

Let us know,

Christian

[kc0arf]

Oh -- one other thing:

IF that fails, have your administrator account make a new user. Login as that user. See if the help works. If it does, then you have clues that a preference is messed up. If not, I would suggest the application is at fault.

[dansterdan]

Hey Christian,

waddaya know, I have the same problem as Chico Burmania... tried your ideas- it does regenerate the helpviewer.plist, but that doesn't fix the problem. Changed to a different user, and help works fine- so I agree, must be a problem with permissions.

Disk Utility is all happy, so I'm stuck. One thing I thought of - I'm an ex-Windows idiot, and in Bill Gates' world everything is tied up with the web browser. I have been fooling with the default web browser on my box (but tried to restore the defaults)- could that be related? Does help use Safari or something to render its output?

thanks for your help, and gudday from New Zealand,

Daniel

Oh -- one other thing:

IF that fails, have your administrator account make a new user. Login as that user. See if the help works. If it does, then you have clues that a preference is messed up. If not, I would suggest the application is at fault.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

I have been out on vacation. I need to hit the books and see. HAve not forgotten about ya.

Christian