Iphoto keeps crashing...can anyone suggest why?

Question

I have been successfully downloading photographs from my Nikon D80 to iphoto5 on my mac mini for months. (There are only around 1300 photos saved on at any one time...and I'm only trying to download 30 from the camera) Suddenly, I find that the photos start to download perfectly normally, and then iphoto crashes! I've retried, rebooted...all that good stuff, but no difference! I tried downloading them onto a different mac and they downloaded perfectly...so it's nothing to do with the camera.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Mac mini   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

Neeca,
Try not to worry about the folders you see inside the iPhoto library folder when you look at it from the Finder. It can be disconcerting, but iPhoto has filed your photos into the structure so that it can access them when you use iPhoto. The concept of iPhoto is that you view and access your photos from within iPhoto, and let it take care of the file management.
If you have located your original iPhoto Library folder (without the _1 in the name) then this is the one you want iPhoto to open. Hold down the Option key while launching iPhoto. When you are prompted to create or choose a library, click "Choose Library." Use the next window to navigate to the iPhoto Library folder (probably Home/ Pictures/ iPhoto Library). With the iPhoto Library folder selected, click the Open button.
Does your original library then open in the same condition it was in before you created the new one? Can you see your photos in the viewing window? If so, good - you are back to where you started. Close iPhoto. Hold Option and Command while launching iPhoto. Select the first 3 options in the dialog box and let iPhoto rebuild its database. This should help with the crashing.
If your library does not look the way it did before, then you have made changes to the folders or files from the Finder. You'll have to undo those changes. The random photos and numbered folders all over the place are the way iPhoto catalogs your library. Changing them from the Finder breaks the links between your photos and the database, so that iPhoto has lost track of your photos. If you can't put things back as they were, you will have to create and populate a new library. You will lose all of your Albums, keywords, ratings, and other organizational efforts.
Post back with results, and we'll help you get your library up and running.