Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#4): Sleep Issues, solutions; More incompatible SCSI cards; Widget Memory leaks; more

Sleep Issues Several users have reported some significant issues with sleep after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4.1. These include an inability to properly go to sleep, problems waking from sleep, and the display going to sleep without the Mac going to sleep.

MacFixIt reader Philip Machanick writes:

"My iMac G5, after installing Mac OS X 10.4.1, has started putting itself to sleep. The fans rev up and it puts itself to sleep for no apparent reason. [...] Quitting a few apps seems to make the problem go away."

As noted in the above report, sometimes an errant application can cause problems with sleep. Try quitting a handful of applications at a time and check for persistence of the sleep problem while they are inactive.

In the past, deleting the following .plist files and restarting has proved a successful workaround:

• /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
• ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
• /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist

More incompatible SCSI cards As previously noted, various SCSI devices can cause major problems with Mac OS X 10.4.0 and Mac OS X 10.4.1 including problems installing the OS, starting up, shutting down, or using other devices. If you are having such problems, disconnect any SCSI devices or SCSI PCI expansion cards and check for persistence of the issue.

The latest card to be noted for causing issues comes from the now defunct Orange Micro corporation.

MacFixIt reader Dan Foster writes:

"The Orange Micro Grappler SCSI card doesn't seem to be compatible with Tiger 10.4.1 . I've had a fully functional Tiger system with the exception that allowing or putting my PowerMac to sleep would result in an immediate kernel panic. Through a trial and error series I found the culprit was the Orange Micro Grappler 930 card. Since I'd read online recently that Orange Micro seems to have gone out of business, it may be a serious blow to Grappler users since one would think no updated drivers/firmware would be coming from them."

More Spotlight limitations One MacFixIt reader notes another significant Spotlight limitation (in addition to a previously noted inability to successfully search for invisible files) -- Spotlight comments are not preserved for files backed up to removable media.

The reader writes:

"Just to mention a little Spotlight issue, or, at least, so it appears to me: if I tag with Spotlight comments all of my files, then I backup all of these files on a removable media such as CD's or DVD's, all of the comments simply vanish.

"I understand Spotlight doesn't index CDs or DVDs media for opportunity reasons, but, since I'm a digital photographer, I thought it could be useful to "tag" all of my pictures to quickly recollect them when I need to, getting rid of third party (expensive) softwares. If I move my commented pictures on a CD to archive them, I'm no more able to get my spotlight comments back, since they're not (obviously?) stored within the file."

Widget memory leaks Users continue to note issues with excessive, swelling memory usage from various Dashboard Widgets.

One poster to Apple's Discussion boards, Farlander, writes:

"There appears to be memory leaks in various widgets or in the Dashboard itself. For example, the Weather widget, that comes with the Dashboard by default, starts up taking about 7-8 megabytes, but after a few days of staying there would grow up to tens of megabytes (after 2 days of running on my powerbook every Weather widget grew up to 60 megabytes and I've had 5 of them open - that's a whopping 300 megabytes just for the Weather!!!) It appears that each one of them takes more and more memory each time I activate the Dashboard."

As noted previously in our Mac OS X 10.4 Special Report, if you are experiencing significant system slow-down that can be realistically attributed to Widgets, you can end all Widget processes by temporarily killing the Dock. This can be accomplished by opening Activity Monitor (located in Applications/Utilities) and looking for the "Dock" process, then clicking the "Quit Process" button.

This will end all currently running Widget processes, which will not be re-activated until you again click the Dashboard icon and re-display active Widgets.

This process can also be accomplished with the Widget Manager freeware utility.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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