[katydaly]

I read several reviews of MacKeeper online before purchasing earlier this week. All were positive. Now that I am having this problem, I am finding all the negative reviews!

I used it to do a Fast Cleanup, and also had it detect duplicate files and trashed quite a few of them. Everything seemed to be OK, until online today and the screen went completely white, couldn't see a thing. Restarted a few times until now it is only half white, ghosted back everything on the screen.

I contacted MacKeeper through Live Chat twice, and on the phone twice, but they claim it is not their software that is responsible, even though I told them I found similar complaints on apple.com/support. Apple phone support won't give me any free advice because I am out of warranty, but want me to bring to an Apple store. Closest one is 2 hours away, but there is an Apple supported computer repair center a bit closer.

Question is: Do you think this is the software, or just a coincidental hardware issue? I have already tried trashing the MacKeeper app and restarting, with no effect whatsoever.

[macnuke]

best plan..... destroy that MacKeeper install and lose it forever.

really. sorry i have no better answer than it is poorly written, does nothing you can't do for yourself without wasting system resources and providing you with many opportunities to pull your hair out.

really... lose the dog.

[Philsvbz]

Katy, I'm sorry for your experience. Best thing you can do is uninstall the program, although it is designed to embed itself in your machine and is very hard to get rid of. Consider that you must enter your admin password before emptying the trash. What other app makes you do that? "Geek on demand" is non-existent, and rather than existing as a helper or healer of broken macs, the program is a means for the crooks at Zeobit to get your money. Hopefully some wiser Mac users will read about our problems and steer clear.

[katydaly]

 Philsvbz, on 25 July 2011 - 08:26 AM, said:

Katy, I'm sorry for your experience. Best thing you can do is uninstall the program, although it is designed to embed itself in your machine and is very hard to get rid of. Consider that you must enter your admin password before emptying the trash. What other app makes you do that? "Geek on demand" is non-existent, and rather than existing as a helper or healer of broken macs, the program is a means for the crooks at Zeobit to get your money. Hopefully some wiser Mac users will read about our problems and steer clear.

Thanks guys. I did uninstall the program right away, but I suspect, as you say, that it is embedded elsewhere. I am still having problems even after visiting the Apple repair guys. They reset the PRAM (Hold down Command Option P R while starting up, and let it chime a couple of times) and my screen came back. They even restarted again and it was fine, but of course, as soon as I got it home, the white screen came back. When I called, they told me how to reset the PRAM, which worked again, but only for a few minutes. On restart, it is working again, but I expect it won't last.

I have learned my lesson and feel incredibly stupid for falling for this scheme!!! MacKeeper is evil!!!

At least they have promised to refund my $38.95. We'll see...

[katydaly]

Here I am replying to my own posts! I have had the white screen return again, several times in the past few hours. This is something I found that appears to have solved the problem, from another forum.


I cleaned my caches (#3), and so far, so good. KatyD




If something isn't working or if things just seem "odd" with your Mac, don't fret... and don't go grabbing your OS discs to do a reinstall, either. Reinstalling the OS is almost never warranted and really shouldn't be needed.
If something seems awry your Mac or with one of your apps, chances are one of these following items will help you.


1) Reboot the Computer. - Simple, I know... but it will fix so many "issues" without the need for any other steps to be taken.
This should be done before any other step is attempted.

2) Run Software Update - Again, very simple, I know... but many times simply updating your software with the latest patches will again fix so many "issues" without the need for any other steps to be taken.

3) Clean Your Caches - There are several tools that will do this for you, Onyx, MainMenu, Quicksilver...etc. Even if you don't have one of those you can still do it manually. Just delete everything in the folders Library/Caches and in Users/*Your User Name*/Library/Caches. When finished reboot.

4) Delete the .plist file - If it is a particular program that is giving you problems delete its preferences (.plist) in 'Your User Name'/Library/Preferences

5) Uninstall then reinstall the offending application - If it is a particular program that is giving you problems and deleting the .plist file didn't help, then uninstall and reinstall the application.
Important -- If your application came with an uninstaller then use that to uninstall it first. Do NOT just move it to the Trash and do NOT use a third-party app to uninstall it. Use the provided uninstaller and then reinstall the application.

6) Repair Disk Permissions - Go to Applications|Utilities|Disk Utility and select repair disk permissions on your OS X drive

7) Run Disk Repair - Boot from your restore/install disc and run a Volume/Disk repair on your startup disk.

8) Resetting the PRAM: When booting, hold down Command-Option-P-R and wait for the triple startup chimes.

9) File System Check - When booting up your computer hold down the Apple Key & the S key and it will boot into single user mode. When the text is done loading on the screen type in /sbin/fsck -f and hit enter.
When that is done if it fixed things then do the check again to make sure it is cleared
When finished with that type in exit and it will start the computer in normal mode

10) Reset Nonvolatile Firmware - When booting, hold down Command-Option-O-F and wait for the command prompt. Type "reset-nvram" and hit enter.

11) Search the Forums - At the top of the forum you will find the 'Search' feature. Type in your keyword and have at it.
You can also use the 'Advanced Search' to narrow your search by sub-forum, thread prefix, date, etc.
You can narrow things down even more by showing your results as individual posts or full threads.

12) Search the Apple Support Knowledge Base - If none of the above have helped, point your browser to - Apple - Support
Once there, you will be able to perform a search and should be able to locate a remedy for your issue.

[macnuke]

one thing i would add.

Preferences.... Accounts ..... Login Items...


select each account and check for Login Items that are not wanted.
remove as need be... this is something MacKeeper adds it's own to, so pay attention there as well.

other than that, nice list.

[Philsvbz]

Lo and Behold, Zeobit refunded my $38.95 today. So, Katy, there's hope. Glad your machine is (hopefully) coming back to health.

[katydaly]

 Philsvbz, on 25 July 2011 - 08:30 PM, said:

Lo and Behold, Zeobit refunded my $38.95 today. So, Katy, there's hope. Glad your machine is (hopefully) coming back to health.

Thanks! Yes I seem to be back to normal and I believe they are refunding my money. The PRAM reset and cache cleaning appear to have solved my white-screen problems. Now I just have to reset my brain so that I don't do anything so stupid again!

[katydaly]

I am still having intermittent problems.

I can be on the Mac all day sometimes and have no problems, and then the next day, the screen goes green, or orange after only about 15 minutes of use, and repeatedly does that throughout the day. I don't think it has gone white again during use, but sometimes on start up it comes up all white, or all black.

I am still running through all of the repairs on that list I posted above to see if they help. But if they don't, I guess I will have to go back to the repair shop.

Back to my original question, do you really think this can all be because of MacKeeper and not because of some hardware issue?

[macnuke]

 katydaly, on 31 July 2011 - 06:48 AM, said:

I am still having intermittent problems.

I can be on the Mac all day sometimes and have no problems, and then the next day, the screen goes green, or orange after only about 15 minutes of use, and repeatedly does that throughout the day. I don't think it has gone white again during use, but sometimes on start up it comes up all white, or all black.

I am still running through all of the repairs on that list I posted above to see if they help. But if they don't, I guess I will have to go back to the repair shop.

Back to my original question, do you really think this can all be because of MacKeeper and not because of some hardware issue?

model and date f your Mac?
it may be heat related.
it may be a pc of hardware failing.

[sandbag1]

When I have these unexplainable seemingly impossible to fix problems, I reboot using Applejack.

[katydaly]

 sandbag1, on 31 July 2011 - 06:25 PM, said:

When I have these unexplainable seemingly impossible to fix problems, I reboot using Applejack.

Is that a free download? I will look it up as soon as I am done here.

As for MacNuke's questions: I don't know the model or year, other than it is about 2 years old, Intel-based iMac, running 10.6.8. Although we do not have AC here, it hasn't been that unbearably hot that it should be causing this. In the 80s during the day, 60s at night. Do you think that could be it? Man, how would I fix that???

[katydaly]

I am back to working on a half-white screen! ARRRGGGHHH!

I tried rebooting using applejack in SUM, but got a message saying:command not found. I tried applejack, applejack auto, and applejack auto restart, and all said not found. So then I tried typing in /sbin/fsck -f, and in the middle of whatever it was doing with that, the screen went completely white again and I had to shut down.

Now I have just rebooted normally, and have the half-white screen. I tried some of the things I had tried before, like repair disk permissions and verify disk. Verify disk says that it is OK, but I just noticed that in the list of permissions that were repaired, there was one that said:


Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired.

Could this be my problem? If so, how to fix?

I'll keep trying...

[katydaly]

 sandbag1, on 31 July 2011 - 06:25 PM, said:

When I have these unexplainable seemingly impossible to fix problems, I reboot using Applejack.

I finally figured out that I had to download AppleJack and then reboot. I did, and ran it, and it said this: Either your disk had no problems, or the problems were repaired. But then when it restarted, just the fan was running and no screen to see. Restarted again, and it appears to be working. This is really frustrating!

Back to my other question above: From running the "repair disk permissions" do you think this is a problem:

Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired.

I don't know what else to do at this point. I am reading about evercookies and getting ever more scared!