Troubleshooting SPSS 16 uninstall for Mac OS/X Leopard

SPSS 16 EVAL is EVIL.

I've been using SPSS 16 for Mac OS/X for a quantitative analysis class. I had been using a licensed copy on my mac book pro, and recently installed the eval version on my mac pro - more and faster CPU cores, more and faster memory, more and faster disk; seemed like a good idea to run it where it'd go faster, but I didn't want to pay for two licenses.

Well, the 14 day eval expired, and so I uninstalled it. And then Finder crashed. And crashed. And crashed some more. And kept on crashing. And continued to crash even after a reboot.

I was able to get into System Preferences, turn on sshd, and log in remotely, and look at /var/log/system.log. There were a ton of messages that looked like this:


May 5 15:33:32 lennybruce Finder[208]: [QL ERROR] Can't get plugin bundle info at /Applications/SPSSInc/SPSS16EV/SPSS16.0.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/SPSSQL.qlgenerator/
May 5 15:33:33 lennybruce ReportCrash[196]: Formulating crash report for process Dock[207]
May 5 15:33:33 lennybruce ReportCrash[196]: Saved crashreport to /Users/pclark/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Dock_2008-05-05-153331_lennybruce.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20
May 5 15:33:33 lennybruce com.apple.launchd[115] ([0x0-0x44044].com.apple.dock[207]): Exited abnormally: Bus error
May 5 15:33:34 lennybruce ReportCrash[196]: Formulating crash report for process Finder[208]
May 5 15:33:34 lennybruce Dock[209]: [QL ERROR] Can't get plugin bundle info at /Applications/SPSSInc/SPSS16EV/SPSS16.0.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/SPSSQL.qlgenerator/
May 5 15:33:35 lennybruce Spotlight[123]: [QL ERROR] Can't get plugin bundle info at /Applications/SPSSInc/SPSS16EV/SPSS16.0.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/SPSSQL.qlgenerator/
May 5 15:33:35 lennybruce com.apple.launchd[115] ([0x0-0x45045].com.apple.finder[208]): Exited abnormally: Bus error
May 5 15:33:36 lennybruce ReportCrash[196]: Saved crashreport to /Users/pclark/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Finder_2008-05-05-153332_lennybruce.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20


The solution was to blow away the /Applications/SPSSInc folder that the uninstaller had left in place. This could be done either from a ssh connection, or from another login, or perhaps even by booting from the install DVD. Once that folder was gone, Finder came right up. Problem solved, back to crunching numbers on the MPB.