Crashes of Preview, TextEdit and other apps after initial setup

[Rataglok]

Hi everyone,
I setup an old MacBook Pro 2011 with Mavericks now three times and always run into somewhat of the same error, that I cannot solve.
The problem is, that many apps, the default ones and also third-party apps are craching when opening any file. The apps, that are the most problematic for me are the Preview and TextEdit. Sometimes also Xcode or CotEditor crash. For example, when I create a new file in TextEdit, save it and then try to open it again, the program crashes.

How I setup Mavericks
For the most part, I followed the steps from https://mavericksforever.com/
At first, I installed Firefox Dynasty and AquaProxy and applied the Emoji Update.
After creating the Backup, I removed only iBooks.app because I want to keep the other build-in apps and applied the two security patches.
I did also replace QuickTime with the 10.2g version provided there.
On the third install I stopped here.
I installed the flip4mac and WFH Components Plugins and skipped the downloader section.
After that I installed SIMBL for Mavericks.
This is where I stopped for the second Install.
On the first install I installed Archive Utility Plus and Preview Plus. I did not make any other of the customizations.

The software I installed afterwards is Microsoft Office 2011, VLC over MacPorts, iMovie, iPhoto, Xcode, SublimeText and CotEditor.

The first install was nearly unusable with the crashes on the Preview and TextEdit. I cant open a screenshot I took on the same computer and could not open a text file. For example the AquaProxy documentation.

With the second installation I was able to preview some files, I was not able to preview before, but some still did not work. TextEdit did still crash on many files. When I tried to ope the same files with CotEditor it did also crash. One file I've tested was just an `echo Hello > test.txt` file which crashes both editors.

Without most of the modifications on the third install, it only crashes sporadically.

Did I do something wrong on the setup?
I have attached three crash logs. The PreviewCrash.txt and TextEditCrash.txt are from the first install, Crash3.txt is from the second Install. I was now not ablte to produce a crash on the third install yet, but will attach one if I get one and if its needed.

I am fairly new to MacOS overall and am not able to pull anything usable for me from the crash logs.

Maybe someone here has something for me to test or can point me into a direction.

Thanks in advance

 

[Bigwaff]

The problem is, that many apps, the default ones and also third-party apps are craching when opening any file.

Do the apps crash when launched via double-clicking the app itself, or only when double-clicking a file w/ type associated to the app?

 

[Rataglok]

In most cases they crash when opening a associated file type. Sometimes it occurs on normal startup, but I suspect it is trying to load the last used file.

 

[Bigwaff]

Hmm.. I've got a vanilla install of Mavericks 10.9 in a Parallels VM and I'm not experiencing any crashes opening documents with default apps. Do these crashes happen w/ vanilla install?

 

[Rataglok]

I have tested a few files on the clean install previously and they did not crash.
But they where all image file if I remember correctly so I will test again with text files for the editor.

 

[Rataglok]

I have now done a vanilla install of Mavericks on the same Machine. Only installed the pending Updates from the AppStore. After that I tried to open the files again and both TextEdit and Preview crashed there too. Funnily TextEdit did also crash while saving the crash log. I have attached the logs again. I did also attach a test Image that is one of the ones I have tried.
Could it be, that the Mavericks image used for the installs is defective?

 

[Bigwaff]

Jpeg image opened perfectly fine in Preview in my Mavericks virtual machine. I suspect your issue may be hardware related. I would boot into Recovery and run First Aid > Verify on the start up disk. If problems found, try First Aid > Repair.

You can also run Apple Diagnostics to test your hardware

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

 

[f54da]

run a memtest? All of them are null pointer derefs which seems quite suspicious.

 

[Rataglok]

Hi, I have run the long diagnostic test last night and it did return with "No trouble found."
I am guessing there is a memory test included in these diagnostics. If not, which Memtest software is recommended for Mavericks? Could the 16 GB of memory I have installed be to much for the device?

 

[benwiggy]

We can rule out "a bug in the OS", as Mavericks was used by millions of Macs, and any such problem would have been identified and solved by point updates during its lifespan.

So that suggests either some additional software that you've added, like kernel extensions and "background" utilities; or a hardware fault.

If it's still crashing after a clean install, plus a few standard applications, then that suggests hardware.

Those 2011 MBPs were quite unreliable, particularly the ones with discrete GPUs.

 

[f54da]

If the memtest was fine, then it's probably not the culprit. If you can reliably reproduce a crash, can you step through it in lldb maybe? I'm honestly not sure what's going on... I don't think the discrete GPU unreliability is at fault here since that would either cause kernel panics or show crashes in GPU-related stack trace, but textedit for instance just seems to crash at CFErrorGetDomain. The only consistency is that all of these are null pointer derefs which is why I thought it might be a memory related issue.

 

[f54da]

Actually there is someone back in 2015 who had same symptoms https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7045375 which is even more bizarre.

Also another person in some italian forum posted just a few weeks back https://www.imaccanici.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55384

and they suggested deleting/moving the files
```
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist and

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist to the desktop
```
but it returned soon after.

It's very consistently `_temporaryVersionStorageRequirementErrorForURL` which definitely to me rules out memory corruption (would be random) as well as GPU related issues (this seems specifically due to the Versioning feature). Can you set a breakpoint on `_temporaryVersionStorageRequirementErrorForURL` in LLDB and try to see if you can get more info that way? It seems quite likely to me that this is hitting a codepath that apple did not anticipate, because accessing the error domain for this seems to fail.

You tried double-checking your disk by the way? Can you try booting from a USB drive that is as "standard" as possible (hfs extended case insensitive, etc,. nothing too fancy?)

 

[f54da]

For reference disassembly of `_temporaryVersionStorageRequirementErrorForURL` shows it does something like

rax = GSLibraryCreateForFile("com.apple.documentVersions", &var_18)
if (rax == 0) {
   rax = CFErrorGetDomain(var_18);
   rax = CFEqual(rax, **kGSLibraryErrorDomain);
}

Where GS is GenerationalServices library. At this point I'd suspect the issue is somewhere in file system land. As a quick fix you could maybe disable Versions.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

@Rataglok Can you open Disk Utility, select your startup disk, and run "Verify Disk"? (And Repair Disk if necessary.)

Also, if you select the disk itself in Disk Utility (as opposed to the partition) and select Get Info, what do you see?

Edit: But Apple Hardware Test probably would have found that already... well I'm still interested in what's under Get Info.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

...one way or another this has to be a hardware issue, even if Apple Hardware Test didn't find anything. There's no other reason a completely clean install would be bugged like this.

 

[Rataglok]

Hey everyone, thanks for your suggestions. It seems to me, that I got the issue fixed.
I don't know, what exactly caused it, but it works now. After the reply from benwiggy I got thinking. A bug in the OS is really unlikely for me too. I did also try the suggestion from f54da, but moving the files did not solve it and I don't know how to debug and set a break point on the suggested method. I am relatively new to the MacOS world.

After watching a few Youtube videos on old Macbooks and OSX Mavericks installation I saw the boot selector in one video and thought it looked different to the one I had. But in the video it was a 2013 MacBook so maybe generational update I thought. I installed Yosemite and loaded a time machine backup on its setup of one of the Mavericks installtions. In Yosemite there have been no crashes.
After that I took the MacBook apart and swapped the installed SSD with a different one I had laying around. I did a fresh install onto that. Like suggested to do an install on a standard USB drive. On that install everything worked fine, no crashes.
I noticed with that disk in, the boot selection did look like the one from the video and I got thinking.
I got this Macbook from its previous owner, who did use it running Windows 10 exclusively for the past few years. But now with the support ending he replaced it with a new one and gave it to me.
On the install of Mavericks I just deleted the Windows partitions from Disk Utility and created one with empty space to install Mavericks to.
I did format the SSD it came with from a different machine running Linux and put it back in to do a clean install of Mavericks again. With the now cleaned drive it works flawlessly.

What I suspect happend is that the EFI partition of the disk was messed with previously. I did just realize, that MacOS does have it even thouth it is not show in the Disk Utility. So maybe the Bootloader of the newer Windows 10 versions is the cause of the problem when also using Mavericks. Or could it be, that the EFI got corruped in any way on the installation of different versions of OSX?
I did not encounter any crash from my testing today with the files, that would crash it instantly.

Thanks everyone, very much for your help and time.

 

[Bigwaff]

After that I took the MacBook apart and swapped the installed SSD with a different one I had laying around. I did a fresh install onto that. Like suggested to do an install on a standard USB drive. On that install everything worked fine, no crashes.
I noticed with that disk in, the boot selection did look like the one from the video and I got thinking.
I got this Macbook from its previous owner, who did use it running Windows 10 exclusively for the past few years. But now with the support ending he replaced it with a new one and gave it to me.
On the install of Mavericks I just deleted the Windows partitions from Disk Utility and created one with empty space to install Mavericks to.
I did format the SSD it came with from a different machine running Linux and put it back in to do a clean install of Mavericks again. With the now cleaned drive it works flawlessly.

My take is the original SSD is starting to fail. If you are using the original w/out issue, it's only a matter of time. Download DriveDX and check the Health Indicators.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

 

[f54da]

>format the SSD it came with

That's possible, I remember that there is certain incompatiblity issues between 3rd party SSDs and EFI firmware version.

 

[Rataglok]

I will stick with the new one for now. For reference, the old one causing the issue was a WD Green 240G2G0A.
I run DriveDX on both of them and none are reporting any failures and the self-test is successful on both