Mail and Safari stopped working/opening at all

Question

Hello,
Mail and Safari won't open. The little black arrow appears under them in the dock, but nothing... The little pop-up menu that appears when I click and hold on the icons in the dock says "Application not responding" and offers me the option to force quit. I have checked my users folder and apparently the mailboxes are there, but I cannot open the program. I have always had several mailboxes and kept messages separate and under categories to avoid too many messages in one mailbox.
I tried to repair permissions and I even safe-booted, but no help at all. I noticed in another posting...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5884802#5884802
that someone else is having a similar problem. Could it have been from a security update which I did recently?
Please help!!!
Thank you in advance
Rob

Answer 1

Hi Rob
You could try reinstalling the update again, this time with all applications closed and not using your computer at all while the installation proceeds, especially during the optimization phase part of the process.
If you chose 'Install and keep package' from the Software Update you will find it in
HD/Library/Packages
If you did not keep the package you will need to download it again.
As you are not on the net, (unless you have Firefox which works) download the package, move it to HD/Library/Packages and double click on it to reinstall it.
Security Update 2007-008 (10.3.9 Client)
With a bit of luck doing this might rectify your network connections.
regards roam