Hi Paul, This one is a puzzler, but it sounds as though you might be using Preview to make changes in a graphics file using the Tools menu. Alternatively, could you be opening a file that is corrupted, or not really a supported file type? If the file is on an external volume that is not writable, make sure that you leave any windows that point there. (For example, on an externally mounted hard drive, I sometimes navigate down to a directory in a Terminal window.)
What happens if you force quit the app, and then go to the affected file(s) in question and select it to open by default in some other app, like Skim? Can you check with the Activity Monitor that Preview is not running at all after you force quit? I assume that you tried restarting your machine and also clearing out caches? I've found that in some instances I can fix problems by booting into Safe Mode, which moves problem caches, including font caches that can be a problem for Preview, into the Trash. I believe that Martin McCormick has used this, and also reported that he was able to log into the machine via SSH past a certain point. The problem with safe mode boot is that audio is disabled, so you can't run VoiceOver. However, I've been able to fix some problems by just booting into Safe Mode, and then restarting my machine after I've done this, without having to actually access the system under Safe Mode. You hold down the Shift key when the system boots up, and the boot process takes longer to do than usual, because a directory check of the startup volume is forced as part of the process. Here's the Apple Document about booting Mac OS X into Safe Mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455 A google check indicates that Safe Mode should still work under Lion. Sorry not to have more thoughts about this. Cheers, Esther On Sep 2, 2011, at 11:16, Paul Hopewell wrote: > Hello, > I am running Mac OS 10.7.1 and am stuck in a hang/loop in Preview. > > Whenever I try to exit Preview or close a Preview window I have a dialogue > asking if I want to save the changes to file x. Whatever I choose (don't > save, cancel, save) I cannot get out of this loop. I have to force quit > Preview. > > If I select the window chooser wile Preview is the active window I see some > 10 windows related to different unsaved Preview documents. Whichever one I > choose I still cannot exit Preview. > > If I look at the Preview Windows menu I see that two windows are checked for > display. That is probably a bug and may be the cause of my problems. If I try > to look at the Preview preferences I go back to the save dialogue and again > have to force quit Preview. > > SO how can I recover from this situation and make Preview usable again? I > tried deleting all the Preview preferences in the LIbrary folder but that did > not help. I have time machine and SuperDuper! backups but I don't want to > reset my entire system to some earlier time before the above problem arose. I > just want to reset Preview to an earlier time. > > I would appreciate any suggestions as to what I should do. > > Many thanks. > > Paul Hopewell <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
