Removing the “Gremlins” from Safari 5.1

October 24, 2011   David Wind   No comments

I recently had a Mac customer that had issues with the latest version of Safari. I believe it is version 5.1. Safari would launch fine, but after browsing a few pages it would no longer quit. The “small spinning beach ball” would go until I did a Force Quit on Safari. I also noticed I could not make any changes to his bookmarks with out making Safari hang with the “endless small spinning beach ball.” I decided this must be caused by corrupted bookmarks and/or corrupted Safari configuration settings.

These are the steps I used to fix the issues:

  1. In Safari goto File, Export Bookmarks…
  2. Type a name for the html exported bookmarks and click Save
  3. Close Safari (force quit if necessary)
  4. Open a new Finder window (In Finder, File, New Finder Window)
  5. Go, Go To Folder…
  6. Type: /Users/(username)/Library/Safari
  7. Rename Bookmarks.plist to OldBookmarks.plist
  8. Shrink the Finder Window down to the Dock
  9. Open Safari
  10. Safari may hang at this point. Close Safari (force quit if necessary)
  11. Click on the icon on the dock to bring the Finder Window back up
  12. Move all the files and folders except Bookmarks.plist to the Trash
  13. Close the Finder Window
  14. Open Safari
  15. Goto File Import Bookmarks…
  16. Choose the exported bookmark file you made earlier and click Import button
  17. Goto Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks
  18. Drag your bookmarks from the Imported Bookmarks folder to Bookmarks Menu (or where in bookmarks you want them to be)

This fixed all my customer’s Safari issues. I hope this helps anyone having similar issues.

Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not represent any current or past employer.

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SafariDAVclient taking 100% of CPU on Mac OS X 10.7.2

October 24, 2011   David Wind   5 Comments

I have a customer that recently bought a new Mac Mini to replace an older Mac Mini. All of his data was tranferred at the local Apple dealer. A short time later he noticed the new Mac Mini was running really slow. It did not matter what applications he had running. As I started to dig into this issue, I launched the Activity Monitor utility and noticed SafariDAVclient using high amounts of CPU. It was up to 100% of the CPU at times. I googled this issue and many people said this was happened when iCloud was set to sync bookmarks. This was not the case for my customer. He did not have an iCloud account. He did have a MobileMe account. His MobileMe account was not set to sync bookmarks. I tried changing MobileMe setting, but no matter how I set it SafariDAVclient ran on startup and took high ammounts of CPU.

This is how I fixed the issue:

  1. I opened a new Finder Window and navigated to: Macintosh HD\System\Library\LaunchAgents
  2. I made a copy of the file: com.apple.safaridavclient.plist into a folder on the Macintosh HD which I  created and named: Removed from LaunchAgents. This was a backup so it can be restored when and if Apple fixes this bug.
  3. I deleted the original file: com.apple.safaridavclient.plist from: Macintosh HD\System\Library\LaunchAgents
  4. I rebooted the new Mac Mini and SafariDAVclient did not restart and everything ran at full speed again.

Making SafariDAVclient not run on startup was not an issue for my customer as he does not use bookmark syncing to a cloud service. If he decides to in the future and Apple fixes apparent bug, all he needs to do is copy the backup of com.apple.safaridavclient.plist to its original location.

I hope this helps anyone having the same issue.

Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not represent any current or past employer.

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