iPhoto 7.1 Launch Crash Tip
Posted: Oct 05, 2007
So after I ran the latest update to iPhoto I had a problem where the program would open but almost immediately crash regardless of whether I tried to use it or just left it alone.
Fixing it turned out to be a depressing game of trawling the iPhoto support forums and a whole lot of trial and error, so I’m writing this to spare someone else the stress of finding a fix for it should they have the same issues.
The Fix
First off, back up your iPhoto database which will be found in the Pictures folder in your home folder. I can’t stress this enough-back up your iPhoto database! The last thing you want to do is risk losing all of your photos.
Right click on your iPhoto library (or press Control and click for the mouseless amongst you) and select the ‘Show Package Contents’ option.
Delete the files named Thumb32Segment.data, Thumb64Segment.data and ThumbJPGSegment.data [1].
Close the Finder window and hold down the Command + Option (Alt) keys and launch iPhoto – it should present you with the ‘Rebuild Photo Library’ screen below:
Check all of the boxes and let it run through each task. If your Mac is anything like mine this will take a while.
Hopefully after doing this you should be able to open iPhoto again without it continually crashing on you. As with any software troubleshooting fix your mileage may vary, but hopefully it’ll help someone else out there.
1. This step shouldn’t be necessary considering you rebuild everything when you run the rebuild command, but for whatever reason I still had the issue until I deleted these files first.
