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...and with a little more thought, I'd have realised sooner that the java nightmare is in fact a flash nightmare. The java apps I was failing to get launched have flash content on their front page, and the other apps and browser content all have flash in common. I uninstalled flash 10 and the dictionary is now working again. I installed flash 9 and things are now a bit flaky again. Bit of a mystery. I'm getting a new line in the console every second while the dictionary is running now, which wasn't happening before, and if I allow flash content to play in the browser, it crashes again. And if I try to open the dictionary's Help PDF, it crashes again (this may be the recognised 'problem with fonts in PDFs' issue).<br><br>I'm still going for a full reinstall when my new HDD arrives. And I'm about to enter the universe of eSata - my external HDD is too small for my new drive (gone up to 320Gb because I'm starting to write more music and do stop-frame animation work on the mac), so I've bought a 4-way big drive to replace it - now I can do my backups over eSata, but I can still boot from that drive using FW800.<br><br>This is kind of all meant for distraction/comfort too - my girlfriend just broke up with me a month before we were due to move to the Scottish highlands to live together. At least I'm not buying any sports cars or motorbikes. Though if a new iMac comes out with them fancy new screens...<br><br>- padmavyuha<br><br>[color:purple]A lopsided man runs best along the little side-hills of success<br>- Frank Moore Colby</font color=purple>

It's the same realization I came to yesterday. I was playing with browser preferences because some sites seemed 'way better than others, and finally figured out flash animations were causing the problem. I'm not sure yet how that ties into my iMac's three minute plus boot-up time, but it's sure helped while browsing.<br><br>Good luck figuring out the rest. I'm still hoping for an update of some sort to fix it.<br><br>Good luck with your love life, too. I'm a lucky man, married to a great woman for 30 years.<br><br>[b][color:green]Stumpy</font color=green>[b]

"Along with Security updates, NEVER, EVER, EVER install Java updates. They all suck, and cause more issues than they fix."<br><br>Hopefully, few here would actually take you serious enough to heed your advice. Your advice was not only ignorant but equally irresponsible, particularly with regard to security updates.<br><br>Updating and/or installing anything on a stable machine has the potential to make it unstable in some regard. That doesn't mean you should never install new software or install updates. It means you should do so with caution. Most people have access to more than one machine. Install the updates on a less critical machine first and observe the operation of that machine for a while. If you don't have access to a test machine, then at least wait a while for reports to come out with issues associated with the update. However, once you've taken the basic precautions, you should go ahead with the updates. Once vulnerabilities are published, unpatched systems are all potential targets for malware.<br><br><br>