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Carina C. Zona

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The new Notifications Center in Mountain Lion is a pale, pale imitation of good ol' Growl. But after upgrading OSX, the App Store refused to update Growl. Upon clicking the "update" button, the store kept complaining:

"You have updates available for other accounts. To update this application, sign in to the account you used to purchase it."

Don't believe it. At least, don't assume it's returning a correct error message for your situation. While some people do purchase software under multiple accounts, this wasn't the case here.

The actual complication:

The App Store doesn't know how to cope with a previous Growl install — even one purchased through the store and not currently running.

How to solve it:

  1. Download* Growl Version Detective
  2. Remove everything it identifies in the "Growl" tab. (Don't worry about the Frameworks tab)
  3. Trash /Applications/Growl.app

Voila. The App Store's "upgrade" button is replaced by "install". Smooth sailing from there. Including notifications that are top-rate. Hurrah.