June 6, 2005 9:49 AM PDT

Mac OS X 10.4.1: System freezes occurring when in/entering full-screen mode; QuickTime-related

by CNET staff

Several experience freezes where the system becomes unresponsive but the mouse cursor can still be moved when entering full-screen mode in various applications under Mac OS X 10.4.x.

One reader writes:

"My PowerBook G4 freezes after about 10 pictures when I run 'Slideshow' in iPhoto (without music) and must be rebooted."

Michael Nunn reports that the issue may not be specific to Mac OS X 10.4.x -- though its pervasiveness certainly has increased since the update -- but rather with QuickTime 7.0.x

Michael writes:

"I am running 10.3.9 on a new PowerBook G4 15" with 1 GB of RAM. I have had this happen when running PowerPoint in full screen mode and then running a QuickTime movie on top of it. Sometimes the system would freeze. Other times it would go into a kernel panic mode. The timing seems to be associated to upgrading to QuickTime 7. I have since upgraded to 7.0.1 with the same results, except I haven't seen the kernel panic. Pretty annoying. I was presenting to a large professional group when it occurred. I'm considering downgrading to QuickTime 6 to see if it will help."

MacFixIt reader Dean James adds:

"I am also a victim of the lockups. Tiger becomes unresponsive except for the mouse. It happens when initiating fullscreen QuickTime movies, slideshows or on one occasion simply going to Apple's QuickTime site caused the lockup."

Another reader reports on the issues affliction of some games:

"I'm also seeing a lock up or freeze that involves full screen mode. In our case the freeze happens when exiting a full screen game (World of Warcraft). WoW tech support suggested excluding the WoW folder from Spotlight indexing. So far this has worked for me, but I'm not ready to declare the case closed since the problem seems to happen after long (2 hours?) periods of full screen use and we haven't done that yet. A user on the WoW Mac forum says excluding the WoW folder from Spotlight indexing didn't work for him.

"As far as I know this problem only affects owners of the PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz single processor model running any flavor of Mac OS X 10.4. In our household we don't see the problem on a dual processor G5 and an older G4. There are numerous postings about the problem on the Apple discussion forums, as well as the WoW Mac tech support forums.

"I found the info below in my system log immediately after a forced reboot from the problem: abc kernel[0]: AppleSMU waiting over 2 sec for reply AGAIN! !cmd = 0x27, length = 0x01; kernel[0]: AppleSMUsendMISC: FAILURE -- TIMEOUT EXCEEDED on GPIO !"

MacFixIt reader Seth writes:

"I too am experiencing this problem. Its been there since I upgraded to Tiger. I used the 'Clean install -> copy users' option to install over 10.3.9. Any application that enters/exists full screen mode seems to be effected. I also have a Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz single processor machine. My machine has always recovered given enough time. But 'enough time' seems to be at least 2.5 hours. The Mac OS X 10.4.1 update did not fix this problem."

Another reader adds:

"Since the installation of Tiger, I've had freezes on my PowerMac 1,8 single after few hours of work, the freeze occurs often when i try to view something in full screen mode (diaporama, QuickTime 7, etc.). I've deactivated of the energy saver preferences (my PowerMac won't turn off or sleep even my apple display stays on) but same phenomenon after few hours the screensaver (full screen) causes the freeze of my PowerMac. I never had this kind of problem with Panther.

"When the system freezes, I need to push the power button to restart the PowerMac. I've tried to remotely connect the PowerMac (via SSH) but no response. The system logs are emptied. I've installed TechTool Pro 4.0.4 to check the system for hardware problem but no error is found."

Finally, another reader writes:

"Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is freezing after 2-3 hours, as soon as i launch a Program in full screen mode, and also with Quicktime 7.xx in Safari. This doesn't happen with Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther). Freezes in : Preview 3.0, Spotlight 1.0, Mail 2.0 and iPhoto 5.0.x, etc..."

Potential Workaround: Turn off "Change Desktop Picture" option Some reders reported that turning off the "Change Picture..." option in the Desktop & Screen Saver pane of System Preferences resolves repeated crashes in Mac OS X 10.4.x that may be related to this issue.

MacFixIt reader Dave Wilkins writes:

"I downloaded QuickTime 7.0.1 under Tiger, then my system froze -- even the mouse, which connects via my keyboard. After 8 reboots and doing the usual (repair permissions and the like), I reverted back to Mac OS X 10.3.9 on my 2nd disk drive.

"I had suspected my Screen Saver, set to change pictures every 15 minutes, might be overrunning memory with large photos, so I had switched back to Apple standard stuff, but still had freezes in Tiger.

"Today, reading your suggestions that Quicktime 7.0.1 might be at fault, I booted back into Tiger, and set my desktop preferences to never change pictures. I suspect Tiger uses QuickTime to fade from one picture to the next.

"Result: Tiger has been running in stable fashion for hours today, versus about 5 to 15 minutes previously when I had enabled the Desktop and ScreenSaver picture changing options."

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