Hello All -

Each time I attempt to open my Aperture library I now get a window that says something like “Aperture quit while attempting to restore its windows. Do you want to attempt to restore it's windows?” I have two choices – Don't Restore Windows or Restore Windows. No matter which one I choose I then get the window that says “Opening Aperture - name of my library” and the gear that continually spins. The spinning beach ball also appears. This goes on for about 30 minutes before it appears to quit trying and my computer monitor (ACD 23inch) goes black. Although the computer still appears to be running I have to manually reboot the system by shutting everything down and turning it back on. Once the computer is restarted, Aperture still tries to open. I am able to Force Quit. I have then attempted to open Aperture by holding down the Option key (so I could attempt to open my other library on an external drive or so that I could attempt to create a new library. I still get the window that asks whether I want to rebuild window or not. I have also attempted to open Aperture while holding down Option + Command. Still get the same thing – Spinning beach ball, spinning gear while attempting to restore windows, then the crash and black screen.

Now let me explain how this all started – I imported a new project (319 images). Everything appeared to go just fine, I was even able to backup the entire library (typically, once I import a new project my next step is to backup my library before doing anything else). All thumbnails were there, all previews seemed to have generated. However, some of the previews were scrambled at the bottom when first appearing on the screen, but in a second they would render normally. I attempte to regrenerate previews in an attempt to fix the scrambling. This did not work. I restarted my computer (sometimes this help to “refresh” everthing). When attempting to open Aperture I would then get a window that said “Apeture has detected inconsistencies in you library” with the option to restore. This happened several times, but each time the restoration process appeared to go fine since my library successfully opened. However, a new problem appeared. Now there were no thumbnails. However, I could still click on a thumbnail and see the image in the browser. Attempted to regenerate thumbnails. This did not work.

Since I still had all the images on my CF card I decided to start fresh by deleting the project and re-importing the images. Importing the project seemed to be going fine but suddenly stopped at 67% complete. I cancelled the import, deleted the images that had imported (they had no thumbnails), and was going to start the re-importing process again. And this has now brought me to the situation described in the first paragraph above – No matter what I do, attempt to open normally, attempt to open by holding down Option key, attempt to open by holding down Option + Command key – I just get the window that says “Opening Aperture - name of my library” with the spinning gear and spinning beach ball, followed by a crash and sudden black screen. Sometimes it still asks me if I want to attempt to restore windows, but I get the exact same result.

I am at a complete loss and have absolutely no idea what to do now. I do have a backup of my library and I still have the images of my last shoot on my CF card. If I delete the library from my pictures folder can I then create a new library and build it using my backup?

Please help. Desperate!

John