Odds & Ends: Keychain password; Batteries;

Media Player & 10.1.4; Scanner & kernel panic; more Keychain password glitch? Apple KB document 61187 states: "If your Mac OS X login password is not the same as your account keychain password, you'll be asked for the password whenever an application needs access to your keychain and your keychain is locked." However, Michael Reid found that this is not true in all cases. He writes: "If the keychain password is a subset (e.g., a5bcdefg) of the login password (e.g., 1234a5bcdefg), the keychain will still auto-unlock after boot."

Update: Several readers suggest this may be related to the fact that the login only looks at the first 8 characters of a password.

Macintosh Family: Batteries and Part Numbers Apple KB document 11751 provides information and part numbers for backup and system batteries used in portable and desktop Macintosh computers. It's been updated for the latest Macs.

Windows Media Player and 10.1.4 glitch When Andrew Schimming tried to install Windows Media Player X, the installer kept giving a "Unable to find file Internet Plug-Ins" error. The expected plug-ins folders were all in their expected locations. Microsoft Support told him that this is a "known issue when trying to install the current version of WMP X under 10.1.4."

Update: Matt Deatherage notes that this symptom existed prior to OS X 10.1.4. Other readers confirm this.

Scanner causes kernel panic Cliff Norton reports getting a kernel panic whenever he disconnects the FireWire cable for his Minolta Scan Multi Pro film scanner, if the scanner is on at the time. This happened both with his Power Mac G4 and iMac.

Black screen of death AWeb page describing what its author calls the "Black Screen of Death" for the Apple 21 inch Studio Display CRT monitor has been "temporarily taken down for personal safety reasons." A MacInTouch web page still covers this issue: "The monitor's power light comes on, but the screen remains black."

PowerBooks that won't wake from sleep David Toub has had problems getting his 1999 PowerBook G3 to wake from sleep after installing OS X 10.1.3 or 10.1.4. The issue may affect previous OS X versions as well. Pressing the Brightness key, as suggested by Apple, did not work. There are numerous threads in Apple's Discussions Boards on this matter (for example see one, two and three). An older thread suggests that this problem may extend back to OS 9, while yet another thread describes a similar problem with PowerBook G4s.