Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

QuickTime 4/5 decompressor problem

Aug 14, 2008 3:03AM PDT

Would anyone know an explanation for a strange problem I have had on several machines with QuickTime 4 & 5. It happened originally with our original first model bondi-blue iMac. On installing either of the two programmes to replace QT 3, I found that every other picture clicked on would receive the answer that QT could not find an appropriate decompresser. If one then clicked on the same picture twice (or on any other picture at all) the original picture or the second picture would open without complaint. The ability to open and the failure to do so were always in rigid succession. If one selected 20 pics at once to open, the ability to do so and the failure followed the same rigid pattern. +-+-+-+-+- etc. But the video viewer installed with 4 or 5 worked fine.
The problem is still topical as I have a PowerMac 7100 running OS 8.5 and today I installed QT 5 on it, and immediately the same alternate problem started. Any ideas?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
QuickTime
Aug 14, 2008 5:50AM PDT

My first reaction was to say "download the latest and reinstall"! Not an option on this one.

I would go into the extensions manager and disable ALL the QT extensions you can find.
Reboot.
Go back to the extensions folder, not the manager, and delete all the QT extensions in that folder.
Reinstall QT 5 from whatever installer you have.
See how it goes.

Back in the day I did not use QT to view pictures. Instead I used a program called JPEGView which was a great little program and did not have a problem with opening pictures.

Surprisingly, you can still find it. Take a look Here

P

- Collapse -
back to QT3 + JPEGView!
Aug 15, 2008 10:38PM PDT

Thanks. I found there was no extensions manager that would allow one to take out the extensions, only an Apple System Profiler in the AppleMenu that listed everything one had on the OS. So I removed the QT extensions manually, restarted, checked that my pics would no longer reopen at all, and then re-installed QT5 from the installer: the same +-+-+- pattern began again! So I binned the QT5 extensions, and reinstalled QT3 from a CD copy of our old 8.5 system from our old iMac. I've gone back to living with QT3 as we did for years with the latter machine. But I've followed up your tip and downloaded and installed JPEGView. Interesting little programme, I like the ability to go full screen and cut out the menu line on top. Disadvantage seems to be that one cannot select 25-30 pics or more simultaneously and tell them to open as one can with QT. Or am I missing some trick?

- Collapse -
Extensions Manager
Aug 16, 2008 12:52AM PDT

In your original post you said that you were running a PowerMac 7100 with System 8.5 installed.

In that System, in Control Panels, you will find Extension Manager. It has nothing to do with Apple System Profiler.
To find the control Panels, click and hold on the Apple Menu, slide down to Control Panels, and when the list populates, select Extensions Manager.
If the list does not populate, just release the mouse and the Control Panel window will open.

If you truly cannot find the Extension Manager, reboot the machine and hold down the Space Bar until the Extension Manager appears on the screen.

I think you have such a mishmash of QT components being loaded that none of them are working correctly. You still need to get rid of ALL QT components and start again.

On JPEGView, I have not used that program for 8 years so I cannot help there. You could try looking in the Help file if it exists.

P

- Collapse -
extension confusion?
Aug 18, 2008 8:57PM PDT

Thanks, yes. The problem is often one of translation into German of these Mac OS terms. The Extensions Manager is Erweiterungen Ein/Aus (Extensions In/Out) I now see. Have now used this and also threw everything into the trash to get a clean installation of QT, but the result was exactly the same: alternate opening and refusal. I was quite certain there was no confusion of extensions, either before or after, since this OS8.5 was re-installed recently from the system disk in a clean installation too, and had been hardly altered since. Also all the QT extensions seem to begin with QT so lie together when the file is sorted by name, so they are easy to spot and remove.
I have been worrying that perhaps this QT installer and its contents have been damaged in some way from the very start. As it comes from one of my old CDs, it is clearly the very same installer which always produced a QT5 causing trouble around 2001 on the old iMac! I tried to escape this vicious circle by looking for an online 2008 download for QT5 for Mac but could not find one anywhere, only ones for PC.
Intriguingly I eventually got too fast this time loading and unloading QT5 in repeat tries,and did finally end up with a situation in which I had a dossier of QT5 extensions in the Extensions file and placed QT3 on top of it, so I had two QTs simultaneously. In this case I got the message that the machine could not find the decompressor every time I clicked on a pic, no longer alternately. Perhaps that phenomenon was what you were thinking of. But it was a one-off mistake.
Re JPEGView, have found by trial and error that one can throw about 20 pics simultaneously onto the application icon and it will try to open them, but it complains about most of the pics being damaged and unopenable, wrongly, as it will open them singly. Have now adopted drag and drop one at a time as the quickest and surest way of opening.

- Collapse -
Upgrade your OS to 8.6
Aug 18, 2008 9:59PM PDT

It's free, and swing over to [Here where you can download a copy of QuickTime 6.0.3

The update from 8.5 to 8.6 can still be found on the Apple Web site.

If you have problems finding it, holler


P

- Collapse -
Thanks for clarifying
Aug 19, 2008 1:38AM PDT

Have now downloaded QT 6.03

- Collapse -
Good!
Aug 19, 2008 10:27AM PDT

Before you try to install it, download System 8.6 upgrade from Here, install it and you will be good to go with QuickTime


P

- Collapse -
link not OS8.6 but QT6.03 again
Aug 19, 2008 7:41PM PDT

Thanks, but unluckily your link is wrong and goes back to QT 6.03 again, and not to OS8.6! Sorry!

- Collapse -
Don't you hate it when that happens?
Aug 19, 2008 9:55PM PDT

This is the "real" link Real Link

Guess I didn't quite do the Copy and just pasted the last item on the clipboard.

Sorry about that

P