Safari do not open and ends up not responding

Question

Hi,
Safari no longer works for me after a software update. Safari will not open and ends up not responding upon launch at which time I have to force quit.
I have gone through the Mac help forums without finding a suitable answer and I tried the following actions but unfortunately not one is working.
-I have tried to uninstall and install safari again (to uninstall the program I have deleted also all the cookies in preferences and library and application support);
-I have created a new user and safari does not work for the new user either.
It seems to me that the mac feels that a safari window is open but I cannot see it.
Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

Answer 1

A few things you can try (I see you have tried some of them already):
If your Safari won't open, one or more of the following procedures should fix it:
1. Go to Home/Library/Safari/ folder and remove the following two files:
¥ history.plist
¥ lastsession.plist
(Safari may not load properly If these two files are corrupted.)
2. Go to Home/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/ and remove the contents of that folder.
(These are just webhistory files and are not required for Safari to run. However, similar to preference files, problems can arise if they have become corrupt.)
3. Locate the cookies.plist file that's located in the Home/Library/Cookies/ folder and remove it.
(Again, faults in stored cookies may interfere with Safari's launch.)
4. Check whether any of your third-party internet plug-ins may be interfering with the launch of Safari by carefully moving them to the desktop (do NOT delete them at this stage). You can find these in two places:
Home/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder, and Global plug-ins are located in the Macintosh HD/Library/Internet Plug-ins/ folder.
Also look in Library/Input Managers where other third party add-ons may lurk. If you find a SIMBL folder, please note that some SIMBLE.bundles may require updating or possibly removal.
Restart Safari and place them back in the correct folders, one at a time, closing and re-opening Safari each time. If you discover that one of them was causing the problem with launching Safari, trash it and download and install a fresh copy.
If Safari is getting very slow:
Adding Open DNS codes to your Network Preferences, should give good results in terms of speed-up as well as added security:
If you are using a single computer: Open System Preferences/Network. Double click on your connection type, or select it in the drop-down menu, and in the box marked 'DNS Servers' add the following two numbers:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
(You can also enter them if you click on Advanced and then DNS)
Sometimes reversing the order of the DNS numbers can be beneficial in cases where there is a long delay before web pages start to load, and then suddenly load at normal speed:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2296
If your computer is part of a network: please refer to this page: http://www.opendns.com/start/bestpractices/#yournetwork and follow the advice given.
You could also try these codes as well: 4.2.2.1 & 4.2.2.2
If you use a Router, make sure it has the latest firmware installed.
One reason for a slowness in page loading may be the 'DNS Pre-fetching' feature of Safari 5.x
This is described here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3408?viewlocale=en_US
If Safari seems to hang for ages:
If you have a lot of tabs open and/or a lot of pages running Flash, Safari can sometimes 'hang', requiring a restart of Safari. This can often be inconvenient, and as it is rarely Safari itself that is hanging but merely one of its plug-ins, usually Flash, there is a way using Terminal to restart the plug-ins (without restarting Safari and losing your tabs) by quitting the WebPluginHost process:
Open the Terminal from the Utilities folder in /Applications and type
killall -9 WebKitPluginHost
Note that this command kills all Safari plug-ins, not just Flash. All plug-ins should start back up when you reload the page.
Then go back to Safari and refresh any pages that were using the Flash plug-in. This also fixes the Beachball of Death. Try this whenever Safari gets slow or freezes. The latest versions of Flash 10.1 appear to have improved the situation somewhat, but haven't completed eliminated it.