ISync will install but will not open.

Question

Hi folks,
This is my first post and boy is it a doozy.
I am having a multitude of issues, of which, my own numbskulledry is the primary cause.
I am a Treo 680 user, and hence, I use Missing Sync.
All of my contacts are in Address Book within OS X and none of which are on my brand new 680 or in Palm Desktops address book.
My Macbook is also new. Now, before I bought the 680 I had a 650, and I had a rather old iBook. I have two phones, a smaller phone for my pocket when I am working, an older Moto . ON my new Macbook, I got all of my contacts off of the Moto via iSync. Now I have my new Macbook, and my new 680, I must admit, that until now, I never tried to use missing sync on the Macbook.
I have been unable to get Missing Sync and iSync to play nice at all on the Macbook.
Everytime I went to enable Palm Synching in iSync, iSync would tell me that something wasnt installed correctly. Someone suggested I trash Missing Sync and reinstall it and try again. Well that only made matters worse.
this is where things get stupid..
So I decided to Trash everything and start over. I trashed every file I could associate with iSync, Missing Sync and Palm Desktop.
So...long story short, when I went to the Apple site to DL iSync, to my surprise I find that the only version available for download, is 1.5. So, I DL'ed it and it installed, but it will not open. It just bounces in the Dock a few times, and then goes away, I've tried this both as a restricted user and logged in as the Admin; same result.
Any helpful thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much for reading.

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
As a general rule, you should not attempt to manually remove synchronization components manually. At this point, you are well past that note of caution but, in the future, don't attempt to do so. As you have discovered, that approach does nothing more than aggravate the issues you face.
You must first do this: reinstall the Palm Desktop, using the package bundled on CD-ROM that you received with your smartphone. [It is important that you take these steps in the order I outline. Seriously.]
Next, you should download Pacifist and use that utility to extract and install the iSync 2 package on the original Mac OS X 10.4.x that was supplied with your machine. There is now other way to perform this properly, and you cannot download a copy of iSync 2.x, which is required for use with Mac OS X 10.4 or later. To extract and install iSync, follow these instructions:
If you need to reinstall iSync, you'll need to do it in a two-step process, initially using the Pacifist utility to extract it from your original Mac OS X 10.4.x Install or Upgrade DVD.
Download Pacifist from here.
To extract and install it, launch Pacifist. Insert your Mac OS X 10.4 Install or Upgrade DVD in your optical drive and wait for it to mount. Press the now-activated Open Mac OS X Install Packages button. Wait for the window to appear—it may take some time to load all of the resources—then double click on the Contents of Essentials.pkg file to open it, double-click on the Applications folder, select iSync.app then press the Install button.
That will install a copy of iSync 2 into your Applications folder. Then run the Mac OS X 10.4.9 Combo update for PowerPC or intel processor based machines—whichever is appropriate for your platform—to update it to release 2.4.
Those specific updaters are available at these links:
• for PowerPC: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1049comboupdateppc.html
• for intel: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1049comboupdateintel.html
Once you have done that, reconfigure iSync to support your smartphone by adding using the Enable Palm OS Syncing… option. You should also reset the synchronization framework by opening the Preferences… dialog and pressing the Reset Sync History… button. Quit iSync.
Launch the Address Book and use the built-in option under the File menu to back up your contact records. Do the same with iCal, using its built-in option to back up your event and task records.
At this point, if you intend to use iSync, initiate a synchronization event and choose Replace to overwrite the contents of your handheld, unless—by doing so—you would lose information on it that is not in iCal or the Address Book. If that is the case, you must instead choose Merge.
Once you have done that, examine all of the records in iCal and the Address Book and make any additions, deletions or modifications you wish to to your contact, event and task data. Back each set up once again.
Then reinstall the Missing Sync, and use the option to overwrite the contents, this one time, of your handheld with the individual Mark/Space Contact, Events and Tasks conduits. Once that has been completed, make any category or group changes to your records on the Palm, and synchronize as you would normally.
If you are stumped at any point or encounter something you do not understand, STOP and ask about it. And whatever you do, don't delete anything related to your synchronization framework except individual application preferences files, should that be necessary.