Mac OS X 10.1.3: Printing issues; more reader reports

Following up on our previous coverage of Mac OS X 10.1.3 issues:

Printing issues Probably the most frequent bug report we have received about Mac OS X 10.1.3 has to do with printing failures. the most common symptoms are that Print Center launches and then quits without printing - or a crash occurs. Deleting the printer name from the Printer List and re-Adding it often fixes the problem. So might re-installing the printer software.

However, Chip Dickinson was unable to add a new printer to Print Center (generating a -108 error when he tried). He solved this by launching Print Center from Terminal with root access, using the following commands (suggesting that a permissions problem was the "root" cause):

su
cd /Applications/Utilities/"Print Center.app"/Contents/MacOS
./"Print Center"

Update: Nick Zitzmann confirms this is a permission problem and offers this permanent fix:

Open Terminal and go to this directory:
/Applications/Utilities/Print\ Center.app/Contents/MacOS

Type "ls -l" to view the permissions. The permissions should look about like this:
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root daemon 384364 Feb 14 17:46 Print Center
-r-sr-xr-- 1 root daemon 39012 Feb 19 18:16 PrintingReset

If the owner isn't root/daemon, then type:
<sudo chown root:daemon *>

If the permissions are off, type:
<sudo chmod 2755 Print\ Center>
<sudo chmod 4554 PrintingReset>

Alternatively, you could use a tool such as XRay to make these changes.

"Sleep coma" work-around This Apple Discussions Board thread appears to have a work-around for the "sleep coma" (failure to wake from sleep) problem that affects Mac OS X 10.1.2 and 10.1.3 for some users. Previous work-arounds included disconnecting the Ethernet cable and/or USB cables prior to Sleep. The new work-around: From Energy Saver's Options tab, enable "Wake for network administrative access." (Thanks, George Machen.)

Gray screen flash at login Shawn Platkus writes: "After installing Mac OS X 10.1.3 on my iBook, the number of colors were reset to Thousands instead of Millions (as an Apple KB article indicated might happen). However, when I set the colors back to Millions, the iBook still starts up in Thousands until it gets to the Login screen. After I enter my password and login, the screen turns gray for about 1 to 2 seconds while it is switches to Millions of colors. Everything works fine, but I don't think 10.1.2 ever did this." With our iBook set to automatic login, we also noticed a brief gray screen flash at the point where the Login screen would have appeared.

Tracking speed slow-down After updating to Mac OS X 10.1.3 on our iBook, we have had an occasional problem where the tracking speed is so slow after wake-up that we have to move our finger across the Trackpad several times just to move the cursor an inch. This usually occurs after a long period of the iBook being idle.

Update: A reader informs us that this is likely a general issue with the iBook, not specific to OS X 10.1.3 (althoughwe never previously had the symptom). It is supposedly due to static-electricity affecting the capacitance sensors of the Trackpad. There have been postings on Apple's Discussion Boards confirming this. Closing the lid to put the iBook to sleep for a few second generally gets things up to speed again.

Mail quits Peggy Berks reports problems with the Mail application quitting whenever Mail is compacting or indexing the database after updating to Mac OS X 10.1.3. She has sene other reports of this on Apple's Discussion Boards.

Portrait Display conflict Brian Kendig writes: "The Mac OS X 10.1.3 upgrade is incompatible with my Macintosh Portrait Display (640x870 grayscale). Installing the 10.1.3 patch and rebooting will bring up a blank screen and a spinning beachball instead of the boot progress dialog and the login window. The Mac actually boots properly and starts up its network services okay; it's only the display which fails to work. If you shut down, disconnect the grayscale display and connect a color display instead, and reboot, you'll be able to login and use your Mac."

Update: Jeff Hirst replies: "This appears to apply to any grayscale monitor, not just the Apple Portrait Display. There is a report in the Apple Discussion Boards of a similar issue with an E-machine 22 inch grayscale monitor. The monitor must be disconnected for OS 10.1.3 to boot. A dual monitor setup with one color and one grayscale monitor also results in a spinning beachball.

Joseph Holmes does not have this symptom with his Portrait Display, so perhaps something more (the display card?) is involved.

PowerChute conflict According to John Garren, the beta 2 version of PowerChute Personal Edition v1.2 for Mac OS X no longer works in OS X 10.1.3.

Update: John replies: "The problem appears to have been corrected by reconfiguring my USB setup, specifically by plugging the USB cable of the APC UPS directly into one of the G4's ports (as recommended by APC in their setup instructions), rather than into my powered hub. (The powered hub was powered, of course, by the UPS). Interestingly, that identical setup had worked fine with my B&W G3. The APC people were terrifically helpful, and PowerChute is working beautifully again."

Unreal not working after 10.1.3 update? Marcello Rodi finds that Unreal Tournament does not work properly in Classic after upgrading to OS X 10.1.3. "When you start to move forward, you can only go for a few meters and then the character stops dead."