SyncServices… the Bee in my Bonnet

I’m a .Mac user, and for the most part everything has worked fine for quite a while now. All of my Apple items seemed to be syncing without problems. But, recently I discovered that my Transmit Favorites weren’t syncing. I’ve been going back and forth, via email, with Panic for over a week now trying to figure out what was wrong.

The last suggestion that Panic gave me, was to remove a folder called ‘SyncServices’ from “~/Library/Application Support”. It didn’t fix the problem, and as it turns out, this was very bad advise. After removing SyncServices, I started having all kinds of syncing problems. Keychains, Contacts, and Calendars work the best, but they only sync intermittently. Safari Bookmarks no longer sync at all. And, there is a button in the ‘Advanced’ tab of the .Mac prefs called “Reset Sync Data…” that no longer functions. I’ve replaced the original SyncServices folder, but it didn’t fix anything.

After all this happened, I discovered a knowledge base article over at Apple, appropriately entitle “Stay away from the SyncServices folder“:

“As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X 10.4. Removing or modifying anything in it—or in subfolders within it—may cause unexpected issues [...]“

I’ve tried everything I can think of to fix the problem. I’ve reinstalled the 10.4.3 combo updater, repaired permissions, run the daily, weekly, and monthly unix maintenance scripts, etc… nothing has worked! At this point the only option that remains is to reinstall my OS… something I DO NOT want to do.

Thank you so much, Panic, for your great advise!

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