Hot Corners stopped working at startup

I'll contribute with another hot corner failure scenario. I'm using an external display at work and usually just connect the external display, keyboard and mouse to my macbook without opening the lid. Works fine, and when I quit, I just pull the plugs and put it back in my bag.

When I get home and open the lid, though, things start to get weird. Occasionally I get two login screens. One is ok, since I use a password to lock after sleep and screensaver. The second login has always worked, so not a biggie, just annoying.

Second, all icons on the desktop are still laid out as for the larger external display. A "Clean up" on the desktop doesn't help, instead I need to force a restart of Finder.

Third, Spaces don't work as they should. I can use them, but the sliding effect is gone. Instead the application windows just get swapped. This is solved by activating dashboard and/or exposé with the F3 or F4 buttons, respectively. Then the sliding effect is back.

Fourth, hot corners are dead. This is solved by going to the Exposé and Spaces page in System Preferences and changing one corner to something else, activate it (maybe not necessary) and switching back. This, however, needs to be done after activating the sliding effect with Spaces. This is not confirmed, but it seems so.

Annoying bugs, especially since they happen every time I connect and disconnect the remote display before opening the lid.

hmm.. after right-clicking on the Desktop and choosing Show View Options from the dropdown menu, mess around with the settings (simply check and uncheck a parameter, for example). It got it working again for me.

fyi, I have Parallels installed but was not running it. I'm not using an external display, though.

FWIW, I upgraded to Leopard a while back on a PowerBook G4 and have had various screen saver issues since.

I always have my screensaver set to 5 mins with password re-entry for security - re-booting or login/out wasn't a fix for me.
I don't run Parallels/VMware/Office 2008 so they are not the culprit. I DO use Spaces ( a lot 🙂
Today, after reading through this thread, I happened to notice the Spaces possibility. I disabled Spaces, went back to the screensaver and reset the hot corner again (lower right). Reset the timeout to be 3 mins with password enabled.
At this point, I had to make a call to the bathroom and when I returned (more than 3 mins) the screensaver had kicked in - voila, it asked for my password to get in too!

All the Hot corners work now as does the screensaver with password. One strange thing 'though - from the exposé panel, I could choose "sleep display" from the corners but not from the "hot corners" button on the screensaver panel - now I can !

So, logically, just going to the bathroom patently has an enabling effect on OS operations :-))

This just happened to me on a brand new MBP running 10.5.2. I've had the system for about a week and a half. It went crazy on me after I added some additional applications to preset Spaces via the "Expose & Spaces" settings panel.

Has anyone else seen this trigger it? Rebooting does correct the issue for about 30 seconds till it kicks in. In my case I'm using the lower left hot-corner for Spaces and the lower-right hot-corner for showing the desktop. Neither hot-corner works 30 seconds into boot.

UPDATE.

Hi y'all, I thought I would tell you how I got it working again.

1.) Remove all Spaces application mappings.
2.) Disable spaces.
3.) Boot into safe mode.
4.) Enable Spaces and remap Spaces to hot-corner.
5.) Reboot into normal mode.

This seems to have corrected the issue. Mapping either iTerm or Safari to a preset Space seems to have been what made it go bonkers.

Hope this is helpful.

-J

P.S.
I am running VMware Fusion.

morbaq's description of the problem and temporary 'fixes' both worked for me. I also don't have VMware or Parallels installed but I did try Darwine & CrossOver Mac yesterday in an attempt to get Microsoft Outlook XP running on my Mac. I use an external monitor at work with my MacBook but not with a closed lid/mirror mode. I use a larger external as my primary monitor at work while the MacBook's built-in monitor is a secondary with different information on it (virtual desktop mode, I think it's called). Also, I'm running 10.5.3

What was odd was that I could still activate Exposé with my multi-button mouse while I was having the problem, just not via any hot corner.

I have the same problem since upgrading to 10.5.3

Screen saver hot corner AND lock screen functions stopped working. I also have to login twice when I resume from sleep (closed lid).

I am not using spaces, nor do I have VMware running when this happens. Everything else in Expose works great.

For me, nothing brings it back. I have to close my lid to secure my computer.

Even though this is an old post, this is not a solution and you did not read this thread as your idea was already discussed.

For me it worked the following:

I was using the PolarClock Screensaver, which is pretty cool but it seems that it's not fully compatible with Leopard.
When the screensaver was started by Hot Corners or by the System, the ScreenSaverStarter (or something like this) stopped responding and Spaces, Hot Corners, Exposé and Dashboard stopped responding when accessed by Keyboard.
I used ActivityMonitor to check which application crashed and to force quit. I've changed my screensaver and now everything works fine.

Thanks.

Try this topic:

Topic : Macbook Will Not Restart/Shutdown/Log Off
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1426820

Regarding the screensaver not working after the computer has been put to sleep, I found that this is caused by the screensaver engine dying.

Try the following command the restart it and everything should work again:

open "/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSa verEngine.app"

This worked for me also. Thank you very much QuickRedFox!

For simplicity you can use the Activate Screen Saver utility which apparently calls this command as it solved my non-responding hot corner issue.

You can download it from here...
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/activatescreensaver.html

I've been dancing with this devil for some time on both of my MacBook Pros since upgrading to Leopard (the newest one came with it). Here are the scenarios I've seen it happen in:
1) Sleeping (lid-close) while on Dashboard and then resuming (lid-open).
2) Sleeping (lid-close) while connected to an external monitor, disconnecting the monitor and then resuming (lid-open).
3) Sleeping (lid-close) while in screensaver and then resuming.
4) Sleeping (lid-close) while screen is locked and then resuming (lid-open).

The problem is that it's totally not reproducable, but these are the scenarios I see this happening in.

The typical symptoms are, but not always applicable:
1) Hot-corners stop responding.
2) Dock stops displaying minimized windows.
3) Dock shows clones of already running apps/procs (e.g. two firefox icons when only one process is running).
4) Dashboard doesn't respond, even with F4 hit.
5) Likewise for Expose.

Dock force-quit and sometimes Finder force-quit usually fixes the problem.

Reboot always does.

Hope this helps.

cheers,
Etienne

I have had this problem ever since I've had my MacBook (the black one) It came with Tiger, it would randomly have this problem. I installed Leopard as soon as it was available. Guess what, same problem.

The problem is only with the 'start screen saver' option. I can uses all the others with success. Changing the corner to start the screen saver doesn't help. Nor does turning off/on hot corners.

I tried killing the dock in Activity Monitor, which was a success for others as I've read, but sadly not for me.

Rebooting is the only fix for me. . . but here's the kicker, I HAVE TO HOLD THE POWER BUTTON TO REBOOT!!! I cannot Restart/Logoff/Shut Down. It just kills the finder/dock. It goes no further. You can restart the finder and try all day, it just wont shutdown/restart.

I've put up with it for over a year, and now its really starting to irritate me.

Anyone else have it as bad as I do?