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Screen Saver on 10.8.2 Fails to Activate

I upgraded four Macs to 10.8.2 (iMac, 2 MacBook Pros and Mac mini) and the Mac mini is the only one where the screen saver stopped working. Too bad, because this one is our media center, hooked up to a projector and a small 12" display. The 12" display stays on, displaying the photo montage screen saver (Vintage Photos), and works really nicely as a photo frame.


I've tried a bunch of things, including repairing permissions, restarting, changing screen savers, and it started working once, but then it stops working again.


Seems like theres a bug in the timer that tracks mouse inactivity or something, as the screen saver fails to activate.


Any thoughts?

Posted on Sep 22, 2012 5:12 AM

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165 replies

Sep 26, 2012 6:54 AM in response to Mark Jenkinson

I resolved this issue with the help of Apple tech support. What we did was to create another administrative user account, and log into that account. We changed the time to start screensaver from the default 20 minutes to one minute and it went into screensaver. Then we logged out and logged into the account with the problems. The screensaver problem cleared up. Apple said sometimes creating another account fixes the problem for the other accounts as it did for me. Hope this helps.

Sep 26, 2012 7:35 AM in response to kaptnneo

Hi Kaptnneo, I find that logging out fixes the problem temporarily. Actually, the screen saver will only activate the first time. Whether I restart or log out, the screen saver will activate once, but afterwards it stops working until another reboot. Was this solution a permanent fix for you? I just tried it, and I was only still able to get the screen saver to activate immediately after the login...but no more after that.

Sep 26, 2012 1:00 PM in response to Mark Jenkinson

To all I tried the fix above logged in to another user that I allready had made a while back changed the settings in that user account and logged out opened the other user and after one min the screensaver started working again and has been working for the last 5 hrs. So I tried a restart logged in and it is still working..the only other change I made was in Energy Saver preferences was display sleep from never to 15 min.. ALL IS WELL hope this helps Jim P

Sep 26, 2012 1:17 PM in response to mrgadge

Sorry. No dice for me. I've created new users, and all of the above suggestions, and the screen saver just won't work properly. Like I said, it activates the very first time after a reboot, but then after subsequent idle cursor inactivity, regardless of what I set in Preferences, the screen saver just wont activate.


Interestingly enough, I do have teh display sleep to set to never. I've changed that setting too, but that didn't seem to make a difference.


Regardless, I don't want the display to sleep. As I mentioned, it's a nice photo frame in our living room, when the screen saver works. 😝

Oct 4, 2012 7:13 AM in response to Mark Jenkinson

I just got off the phone with Apple Support again.

This time I was advised to do the following:


  1. Open Energy Saver in System Preferences.
  2. Uncheck "Wake for Network Access".
  3. Shut down computer.
  4. Start-up in Safe Mode by holding the Shift Key immediately after pushing the Start Button.


After doing this, the screensaver worked.

I then restarted the computer normally and the screensaver has been working normally... so far.

Oct 4, 2012 3:21 PM in response to corvairkid

Some of us have also been reporting in this thread:


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4318987?start=0&tstart=0


but it has been incorrectly marked as solved. So have moved comments to this thread.


Hello corvairkid, tried your latest Apple recommendation, same result as always, worked for 2-3 hours then back to not working again.


I am now pretty convinced that this is some kind of software bug as the Apple Support person I spoke to yesterday basically agreed with.


He suggested re-installing 10.8 seeing if the problem goes and then re-installing 10.8.2 and seeing if the problem returns. He also requested that we send feedback to Apple so that the software team are properly aware and can work on a fix.


http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


I haven't had time yet to do the re-installs but will at some stage and see what happens.


Len

Screen Saver on 10.8.2 Fails to Activate

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