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PASW (SPSS) 18 Installer crashing on OS X 10.5

I just worked through getting PASW (formerly SPSS) installed on my MacBook, running OS X 10.5

Unfortunately, when I tried installing the software, an InstallAnywhere application would run, then PASW_Statistics_Installer would start and instantly crash.

The system log had some odd error messages:

PASW_Statistics_Installer.app/Contents/Resources/PASW_Statistics_Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/PASW_Statistics_Installerʂ(Cv^X^LecionaTT
PASW_Statistics_18[1948]: osError = -60031
PASW_Statistics_18[1972:10b] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary.
(repeated several times...)
PASW_Statistics_18[1972]: Could not find image named 'lock'.

None of this seemed that helpful, so I tried deleting ~/InstallEverywhere and all the plist instances of SPSS I could find in my ~/Library/Preferences and /Library/Preferences

No luck! Fortunately after a little more poking, I arrived at this solution:

1-line instructions: In PASW_Statistics_Installer/info.plist, change the Java/JVMVersion from 1.5+ to just 1.5. Apparently if you have an updated version of Java, something in the new API breaks the installer.

For example of how to do this, watch this video:

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKNw40HSmq4

Comments (11)

  1. Bart Sullivan

    March 2, 2010 at 9:32 am

    thanks! This worked perfectly. Now I’m good to go.

  2. Richard

    July 9, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Excellent fix! Thank you very much.

  3. pc

    September 3, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    genius!

  4. emm

    September 15, 2010 at 2:01 am

    you can only download PASW statistics twice, that is; on two computers, so what if you installed it already on a computer and the computer decides to crash. installing it again on the same computer, is that counted as twice? or once because its the same computer?

    sorry if i didn’t make much sense.

  5. Dave

    September 15, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    I think that only counts as once. When I was having problems with this originally, I had to try installing the program several times before I figured out the fix.

  6. Howard

    October 13, 2010 at 7:19 am

    Great but when I try to open Info.plist only textedit comes up as a choice. I cant find or open in Property list editor – how do I find this.
    many thanks

  7. Howard

    October 13, 2010 at 10:06 am

    Thanks – that was a quick response – just did that and it worked fine.
    Cheers H

  8. alex

    October 27, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    Howard :
    Great but when I try to open Info.plist only textedit comes up as a choice. I cant find or open in Property list editor – how do I find this.
    many thanks

    text edit will work fine. Just open the file, search for “java” (no quotes). Just below it will state something like 1.5+.

    delete the “+” sign and save the file.

  9. Kait

    March 15, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    Hi There, this solution totally helped me last year. Any suggestions on the new version? There isn’t an easily accessible installer on v. 19.

    Thanks!!

    Kait

    PS – The IBM guys last year directed me to your fix because they couldn’t figure it out…. Pretty depressing.

  10. Limes

    April 12, 2011 at 8:38 pm

    Perfect. I made the change in Text Edit with no problem. Thank you so much! I <3 the interwebz.

The comments are now closed.