HELP! iChat refuses to install

Question

I'm at wit's end.
I was using iChat just fine and dandy yesterday, quit the program when I went home, and now upon launch today, it wants to do an install. I humor it by going thru all the steps in the install windows - it hangs slightly at the "jabber" window, and again at the "bonjour" window. When it gets to the "complete" window, however, I click "done" and it goes into an incessant hang (spinning beach ball) requiring a force quit, or the installer just randomly shuts down on it's own.
I've searched various forums, and have repaired permissions, trashed the plist and preferences, used Pacifist to reinstall from the Tiger disk...nothing seems to work.
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Hi Scott,
Welcome to the Apple Discussion Pages.
When iChat starts it checks for the .plists for the application.
If it can not find them it preumes that this is a first run time and sends you through the Start up screens.
Go to Users/(your Account)/Library/Preferences and see if the 5 .plists are there (all start com.apple.ichat....)
If they are there, is your home folder in the same place on your hadrdrive or did you move your Home folder ?
If the Home folder has not been moved try deleting all the com.apple.ichat...plists
If you can not get through the Start up sreens then, try resarting iChat and just click through the screens with entering data (you can set the accounts up later)
If that fails copy and paste the bold text line into the Terminal Application and hit enter.
/Applications/iChat.app/Contents/MacOS/iChat -errorLogLevel 7
This will make the Terminal application startup iChat
To stop use the Quit item in the Terminal menu and say yes to running all the items that are listed.
IF the error has Broken pipe at the end go here:
Ryan M., "How do I reinstall iChatAV 3.x?", 06:19pm May 9, 2005 CDT
Also check that the Address Book is showing your Details at the Me Card entry (the one with the Head and Shoulders icon)
Ralph