iDVD 7.0.4 "Loading Themes" failure

[SpudMuffin]

I have searched online and found other people with similar issues, and I have tried all the fixes suggested in those threads. Nothing has worked. I would appreciate any suggestions you could give me.

I recently replaced the internal hard drive on my PowerPC G5, and installed Leopard on it. After doing so, I noticed that iDVD was having issues. Whenever I started it up, it would hang on the "Loading Themes" screen for upwards of two minutes. It still started up, however, so I wrote it off as a minor annoyance, and continued working. Then it stopped functioning entirely. When I tried to open it, it would hang on Loading Themes, and then crash.

Forum posters online suggested trashing the preferences files, and I did, but to no avail. Following further suggestions, I attempted to remove the program entirely, and reinstall from the iLife '08 disc. This caused iDVD to go to a splash screen when it opened, but as soon as I attempted to create a new project, it would get stuck on Loading Themes again. At this point, it wouldn't even give me an error message when it crashed - it would just exit the program, after trying to load themes for a few minutes.

Other people online suggested that the issue could be in the themes from early programs. I tried different permutations of removing all or some of the themes from the root directory and user directories of /Library/Application Support/iDVD, and nothing seemed to work.

The biggest possibility that I have been unable to fully try is repairing disc permissions. I have run Disc Utility (both from the OS X disc and from the version on the computer), and it will go through the steps of verifying and repairing permissions, but then it just won't do it. It says that the process was completed, but there are still a list of broken permissions each time I check, no matter how many times I run the program. I've even tried an outside disc maintenance program named Onyx, and it was unable to repair these permissions, either.

Can anyone think of anything I have not tried yet? Would erasing the disc and reinstalling everything even help, considering that it was all installed on a blank HD to begin with?

I would greatly appreciate some assistance.

 

[jpadie]

what are the permissions on your themes directory?
they should be root:admin drwxrwxr-x on /Library/Application\ Support/iDVD
and /Applications/iDVD. if they are not, then change them and try again. don't forget to specify the -R recursor switch on chown and chmod. you will have to use these commands via sudo, too of course.

sometimes the themes are not installed at the initial installation time but are downloaded on request. for this to work you need to have access to the internet and, one assumes, a valid serial number.