ICal was linked to a Google account I canceled. When I open iCal, a message says iCal can't connect to the account server. Clicking OK repeats the message. Clicking OK, iCal quits. How can I eliminate the problem server?

Question

iCal was linked to a gmail account I canceled.  When I open iCal, a message says iCal can't connect to the gmail account server.  Clicking OK repeats the message.  Clicking OK again causes iCal to quit. There is no opportunity to delete the link.  How can I eliminate the problem server or otherwise get iCal working again?  (OS 10.6.8)

Answer 1

The easiest way to fix the hosts file is to restore it from a backup that predates the modification, or to copy the unmodified file from another Mac. If you can't do that, then do as below.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
open -e /etc/hosts
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Paste into a Terminal window by pressing command-V. A TextEdit window should open. At the top of the window, you should see this:
# Host Database
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
127.0.0.1                              localhost
255.255.255.255          broadcasthost
::1                                        localhost
Below that, you may see some other lines. The first 9 lines should be exactly as above, apart from differences in the blank space within lines. Otherwise you can't use this procedure—STOP and ask for guidance.
If the contents of the TextEdit window are as described, close it, then enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (by copy and paste):
sudo sed -i~ '10,$d' /etc/hosts
You may be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. Confirm. Quit Terminal.
If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator. Log in as one and start over.
That will fix the hosts file. There is now a copy of the old hosts file with the name "hosts~" in the same folder as "hosts". You can delete the copy if you wish. Don't delete the file named "hosts".