Screensaver Settings Freeze

One thing you might try is to delete preference files associated with the Screensaver. As far as I can tell, these are the files:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.screensaver.slideshow.xxxxx xxxxxxx.plist

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.screensaver.xxxxxxxxxxxx.pl ist

where xxxxxxxxxxxx is 12 characters with letters and numbers, which is probably unique to your account.


EMAC G4 1.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Here are some troubleshooting ideas.

1) Try using the Screen Saver in another account and see if you have the same problems. If there are no problems in another account, then the problem is in your account. If this happens, I would suggest that you drag the /Users/yourname/Library/Screen Savers folder to the desktop, if such exists. Then, try again.

2) If no progress, I suggest that you go through the housekeeping tasks as described in: Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption. These tasks include repairing the disk, repairing permissions and cleaning caches. Sometimes these tasks fix hard to find problems.

3) If no success, try looking for an error message in the console log. To do this, I suggest that you start the Console app from the Utilities folder. Then, use the logs icon at the upper left to make sure that the console.log file is open on your screen. Then, do the things in System Preferences that fail. When a failure occurs, see if something is written to the log. If so, please copy and post here. It might provide a useful clue.

Rich

The sum total of what you have learned is useful, although the log is not as helpful as I hoped it would be - I was hoping for something like "library blahblah is missing" or some such thing. But it is still useful. From what you have found so far, I conclude:

- The problem is not in your account
- The problem is probably in some software that was not replaced by Tiger
- The problem is evidently not due to permission problems, filesystem problems or a corrupted cache
- The error messages from the log were issued by System Preferences. So, the problem is probably not due to interference from some other app or process. It is in System Preferences.

No surprise - these results suggest taking a closer look at System Preferences. I find that some of the items in /System/Library/PreferencePanes, which are related to the ScreenSaver, were not updated with Tiger. So, I think this area is a candidate for the origin of the problem. Before I suggest that you replace some of the software, there is one other thing worth checking - I see that there is a logical link and if that is broken, it could cause your trouble. To inspect this, I urge you to start the Terminal app from the Utilities menu and then copy and paste the following command:

ls -l /System/Library/PreferencePanes | grep Screen

If you try to type it, make sure that you maintain all spaces, case and note that the "l" characters are "ells" and not "eyes". Copy is much easier.

I expect 2 lines of output. Please copy them and paste in another post. This is what I get:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 8 Apr 2004 DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 33 7 Jan 2004 ScreenSaver.prefPane -> DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane

Rich

You output looks perfectly normal. The logical link is the ScreenSaver.prefPane -> DesktopScreenEffectsPref.prefPane business.

I think the next thing to try is to replace the /System/Library/PreferencePanes/ScreenSaver.prefPane folder. I am not sure this will fix the problem, but I am hoping that it will.

To replace the folder, you could either try to copy it from another machine which has Tiger installed or you could install it from your Tiger DVD with the aid of an app called Pacifist. I do not have my Tiger DVD with me at this time so I cannot test out the process. But, basically, once you had Pacifist installed and had inserted your Tiger DVD, you would open the Mac OS X install packages and then search for the proper folder. In the search window, I would try ScreenSaver.prefPane. If there are multiple hits, normally you would want the first one, but you can select different hits and look at the screen on the left to see if ScreenSaver.prefPane was nested as you might expect.

I hope this helps,
Rich

EMAC G4 1.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4)