Security Update 2006-003 special report follow-up

Acrobat crashing on launch -- fix We previously reported an issue where Adobe Acrobat 7.0 fails to properly launch after applying Security Update 2006-003.

MacFixIt reader Bernard Tourillon is the latest to report the issue.

"Following updating my MacBook Pro with Security Update 2006-003 last week, my computer froze when I attempted to open from word my Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard. I tried to restart with a hard reboot to no avail. Every time the computer crash after less then one minute."

It now appears that a corrupt font cache file is to blame for the crashes in at least some cases.

One MacFixIt reader reports:

"I too had a significant problem with this update on my MBP. It installed fine, but when I went to print a PDF using Acrobat 7, the machine crashed hard. After a reboot, I couldn't login at all - the screen just froze at the prompt (or worse, showed a blue screen with nothing at all on it.)

"Safe boot allowed me to go inside and see what was wrong. I reinstalled the OS, and all was well again.. just to try and use Acrobat and -boom- I had the same issue.

"It turns out that the font cache was corrupted. I went into safe boot, found the bad cache file in /Library/Caches (it was the only one showing ".lock" next to it.. not sure if that helps), and deleted it. All is well again."

Note that you can also clear the cache files identified by the above reader with a utility like Cocktail or Tiger Cache Cleaner.

Continued FireWire issues Meanwhile, users continue to report issues with FireWire drive accessibility after the update.

MacFixIt reader Michael writes:

"I have also lost the ability to mount my FireWire hard drives on my Mac Mini. I have downloaded and installed the combo update from Apple's site, unplugged >everything< from the mini and left it overnight, repaired the permissions with the startup DVD & Onyx, zapped the PRAM, yoinked the iSight, and this morning run Applejack. None of it has worked. All I get is a warning that the HD is unreadable and needs to be initialized."

If you are still having FireWire issues have trying the fixes listed in this section of our Security Update 2006-003 special report, please let us know.

Matlab freezes confirmed by developer MacFixIt reader Ray Zimmerman reports that MathWorks has confirmed the issue of Intel Macs freezing on Matlab launch after applying Security Update 2006-003.

"According to message #83 in this post, they've reported it to Apple."

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For more coverage, see our Security Update 2006-003 special report.

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