No starry night background in Time Machine

This problem deals purely with aesthetics, but is bothersome to some users nonetheless. In some cases, the traditional Time Machine background disappears, and instead of the starry night, users receive a blank white screen.

Apple Discussions poster Robert Tolton writes:

"Time Machine no longer displays it's space background and moving stars. Instead, the background is just white. I've repaired the disk and permissions, installed all the latest updates - but no change."

Time Machine works properly despite this problem. The problem occurs even if the "vortex.png" file is present in the Finder's resources and has the appropriate permissions, indicating it is not a resource accessibility problem. In addition, standard check routines such as running a permissions fix do not seem to help.

Users have found that Time Machine's graphics enhancements have problems when functioning with secondary graphics cards installed in the system, and as such these problems are limited to Mac Pro computers that have multiple GPUs installed. There are no known hidden preferences for Time Machine that deal with which display to use in a multi-display system, so for now, the workaround is to change the primary display in the System Preferences.

If users have two graphics cards installed, ensuring the primary monitor is being displayed through the top-most graphics card in the system will display the starry night properly in Time Machine. For some users who do heavy graphics processing this may not be an option, because the Mac Pro only has one additional 16x PCI-express lane with only the bottom-most being double-wide and able to accommodate higher wattage cards. For users with a less powerful GPU in the upper slots, or if they have more than two video cards in the system (meaning the top-most card will be using only a 4x PCU-express lane) their main displays will show reduced performance if they run off the top-most card. However, if graphics performance is not an issue, changing the primary monitor will solve this issue.

Fix: Ensure the primary monitor is the first GPU in the system To change the primary display to the topmost card, identify which display is physically attached to the card, and then open the "Displays" system preferences and go to the "Arrangement" tab. Right-click the displays to identify them with a red outline, and when the desired display is identified, drag the white menu bar to the monitor to identify it as the primary one for the system.

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