Cannot get Installer to open.

[mato7742]

This problem began when I could not open the install.app for parallels, however, after trying to get to the root of the problem, I discovered things were actually much worse. It appears that I cannot even open Installer in Utilities. I assume Installer is the application that works to open applications like install.app for parallels. I repaired my disc and disc permissions through safe mode and through the os x disc, which repaired a lot of the programs that would not work in utilities (such as disc utility, color sync, etc.) but not installer. Even more curiously, my neighbor upstairs does not even have the Installer application on his computer. I must also mention that I just upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard yesterday (which was very smooth). Although this seems like a probable cause for the problems that I mention, it was actually occurring before I upgraded. While I was still using Tiger, I tried to install parallels 4.0 and the install.app would not open (instead, it would try and open a blank word document, which is exactly what is happening now), but I figured the problem was only due to parallels 4.0 being incompatible with Tiger. I'm unsure if installer is not accessible on Leopard and Snow Leopard, but only Tiger - this would explain why it is still on my computer, being that it would have been kept when I upgraded directly to Snow Leopard from Tiger.

I know all of this is a mouth full, but my question is whether I should just reformat my start-up disc or if there is actually a way to remove the corrupt Installer and replace it with a new one? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.


- Mat

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: mato7742
This problem began when I could not open the install.app for parallels, however, after trying to get to the root of the problem, I discovered things were actually much worse. It appears that I cannot even open Installer in Utilities. I assume Installer is the application that works to open applications like install.app for parallels. I repaired my disc and disc permissions through safe mode and through the os x disc, which repaired a lot of the programs that would not work in utilities (such as disc utility, color sync, etc.) but not installer. Even more curiously, my neighbor upstairs does not even have the Installer application on his computer. I must also mention that I just upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard yesterday (which was very smooth). Although this seems like a probable cause for the problems that I mention, it was actually occurring before I upgraded. While I was still using Tiger, I tried to install parallels 4.0 and the install.app would not open (instead, it would try and open a blank word document, which is exactly what is happening now), but I figured the problem was only due to parallels 4.0 being incompatible with Tiger. I'm unsure if installer is not accessible on Leopard and Snow Leopard, but only Tiger - this would explain why it is still on my computer, being that it would have been kept when I upgraded directly to Snow Leopard from Tiger.

I know all of this is a mouth full, but my question is whether I should just reformat my start-up disc or if there is actually a way to remove the corrupt Installer and replace it with a new one? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.


- Mat

This is a whole new kind of problem!

You can try to pull installer.app off of the Snow Leopard disk using Pacifist, but you might be better off with cloning your drive to an external (use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper), reformatting your drive with the Snow Leopard disk, and then migrate your settings and files back over from the clone.

 

[ViRGE]

You can try what Stu says. I would just go straight for the format option (or Archive & Install). I seriously doubt Apple did much Tiger->SL testing, and that may be the cause of your issues.