Hi Tiffany, >a friend posted this in her LiveJournal and has given me permission to >repost it here. I have the same problem and we're both looking for >help. > >"I have a question for Mac people. Every time I try to run Mac >updates, VO just says "busy" and it just sits there and I either have >to do forced quit or reboot. I have been trying to give it plenty of >time to do it's thing but it doesn't appear to be doing anything and >just says "busy." Anyone got any ideas? What am I doing wrong? I >would love to fix it so I can use it more because I keep hoping that >if I just leave it alone so it can run updates that it will eventually >run them."
Usually I get the "busy" message when server load is high -- this can be anywhere, and often happens at the iTunes Store when they've just closed it down and re-opened it adding some new features so that lots of people are on-line. One thing you could try is to go directly to the software downloads at : http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ and look for the product you want instead of using the software update. For example, this would give you a link to the downloads page for the new Safari 3.1: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/ You can navigate through "Download Safari 3.1" or speed things up by using item chooser to look for either "Leopard" or "Tiger" and select "Safari for Leopard" or "Safari for Tiger". (I'm still on Tiger). I VO-keys left arrow from there to select the appropriate radio button (VO-keys+space). Then VO-keys down-arrow to the "Download Safari" button and press it (VO-keys+space). This seems to start up right away on my machine. Having said this, I generally don't download software updates right away. I read the MacFixIt pages to see whether there are known problems people have found, which platforms are affected, and what possible solutions are offered before I proceed with installations. However, if you want to get software downloads faster, you can check directly at: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ for the relevant items. The other reason for going to that page (sometimes) is for access to the "combo" updates. With the software updater, all your downloads and updates are "incremental" to keep your downloads small. That means that the system keeps track of everything new that you need. Occasionally, there's a problem because an individual item wasn't updated in this process. In that case, applying the larger "combo" updaters often work. Again, if needed, you can find the links to the appropriate combo updater at the apple downloads pages at the MacFixIt site when they troubleshoot problems. http://www.macfixit.com/ I think there is free access to their pages for at least up to three days after they are published, and maybe longer. You can try the direct download and see whether it's faster. YMMV HTH Cheers, Esther
