Preview won't open any PDF files, just crashes

[martinweiss]

I've tried opening a lot of PDF files, but Preview just crashes. Extremely annoying.

Would the problem report be of use to anyone? It says Exception Type: EXC_CRASH

 

[martinweiss]

I was looking in the wrong part of the forum. Apparently I've experienced what some people experienced with Lion: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1192604/

I went to Disk Utility, repaired permissions. There was something to repair, but it didn't fix the problem. I can quick look PDFs, but not open them. Hmm.

I also tried to delete the contents of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/, this also doesn't help.

Suggestions anyone?

 

[martinweiss]

No ideas? This is really really annoying, I'm not sure what to do.

 

[mrapplegate]

No ideas? This is really really annoying, I'm not sure what to do.

Did you trash any Preview .plist files?
Check the system log?

 

[martinweiss]

I've deleted the files in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

Are there other files I can delete?

This is what I get:

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (Code Signature Invalid)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

 

[mrapplegate]

I've deleted the files in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

Are there other files I can delete?

Search in Preferences, ~/Library/Preferences/ for any Preview .plist files.

 

[martinweiss]

There weren't any. I'm going to have to reinstall ML today, I must have transferred some files I shouldn't have, maybe I accidentally copied over the Keychains folder? Could be it since it's complaining about code signing. Weird though, I've never had any problems like this before.

 

[martinweiss]

Alright. I have reinstalled Mountain Lion twice now. I even downloaded it from App Store again. This has proved to be one big PITA. I need help, I'm not sure I know how to solve this on my own. I am currently writing my Master's thesis. Apple, I am extremely disappointed in you. Preview is such a fundamental application, now I'll have to install 3rd party software

 

[martinweiss]

Okay, I finally got it working, but I'm not sure what the problem was...

I found someone saying that using Pacifist one should be able to extract separate files from an OS X installation disk. Using Pacifist I was able to extract Preview.app, copy it to my Desktop. I tried opening it from the Desktop and opening a file, it worked!

Now, since it's not possible (I couldn't find a way) to delete Preview in the Applications folder I right-clicked to Get Package Contents. I did this for Preview on my Desktop (from the installation USB disk) and copied all the contents from Preview (Desktop) to Preview (Applications).

Apparently this solved my problem. I have searched to see if anyone else had the problem, but I could only find problems with Preview under Lion. Maybe Preview is corrupt in my ML installation? Strange, because I tried to download it again.

I have to admit I am really quite surprised to see something like this happen, and to be honest my initial ML-happiness is somewhat reduced now...