Bitcoin wallet won't open!

[Stephen123]

New to this, so it is definitely something I am doing wrong- I downloaded the latest version of bitcoin for mac and the wallet will not open, All i get is the dreaded pizza wheel of death after the wallet icon appears mid-screen, and then nothing. The laptop freezes and I have to manually shut down the machine. I'm on an oldish macbook 2008 and using Mac OSX 10.6.8 . The bitcoin programme/ dmg is the latest Bitcoin 0.5.3. I really do not know what to do now. Can you help me? What other information do you need?

[TomatoCaqe]

Did the whole blockchain downlaod?

[Stephen123]

Nada, nothing. I waited maybe 15 minutes, it seemed to freeze the processor. I really don't know what to do- I stripped out all relevant docs, the re-downloaded and installed- same thing.

[TomatoCaqe]

It may be the computer is too slow to run it?

[mcorlett]

Try going to ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/ and deleting all files other than wallet.dat.
If your client starts properly, you'll have to wait for the blockchain to download again and be on your way (hopefully a small price to pay). If it doesn't, you can be fairly certain your wallet file has been corrupted, and you will have to restore from a backup or ask for help with recovering the private keys.

[Stephen123]

Thanks!! Did everything you said, and it worked a treat!