Odds & Ends: Energy Saver sleep; IntelliPoint; more

Energy Saver sleep on an iMac Deleting Energy Saver Preferences (and immediately changing the settings so that display and hard drive were set separately) temporarily fixed the problem I had (see "iMac DV and pulse sleep," in The New iMacs Report) where Energy Saver would not put my iMac DV SE into a "full" sleep (where the light on the iMac pulsates). But then a few days later the problem returned. Others continue to report this persisting problem.

Apple Tech support told Cathy Overton they were investigating the possibility that Bugdom was corrupting the Energy Preferences file (I do not think this is so in my case, as I have not run Bugdom recently), and to watch for fixes on the Apple support site.

IntelliPoint mouse and games: a conflict? Christian Dailloux found that BugDom did not recognize his Microsoft IntelliPoint USB mouse. Pangea Software told him that the IntelliPoint "seems" not to be compatible with InputSprockets. Alex Blaine reports a similar finding with other games.

Update: Reader Simon writes: "I found the same thing happened in the Quake 3: Demo until I used the "turn off in..." option in the IntelliMouse control panel. The game then let me program the buttons (as well as move the mouse)."

128MB Compact Flash card problems Adam Gervin claims that 128MB Compact Flash cards do not work with a PowerBook Bronze G3. "Cards of this size, if inserted into the PCMIA slot using an adapter, will take a very long time (literally 10 minutes) to appear on the desktop. Furthermore, .jpg or .tif files on the card will not open in any graphics program (Photoshop, GraphicConverter), displaying 'file size incorrect,' or 'end of file reached unexpectedly' error."

Update: A reader replies: "This also happens with SmartMedia cards using an adapter. The safest way to handle these beasts (SmartMedia, CompactFlash, etc.) is to copy the files from them onto your hard drive, and then work with the files from the drive."

Keyspan Adapter and wake-from-sleep crash Christophe Vuattier found that his PowerBook G3 (Bronze keyboard) would frequently freeze when waking from sleep if the PowerBook was started with his Keyspan 28X Twin Serial Adapter plugged in - but not if it was plugged in after startup was over.

HP and UMAX USB conflict? When Henry Sun tried to install the software for his UMAX Astra 2100U USB scanner (driver version 3.51), his HP USB driver crashed with an error that said: "The HP printer driver can not be loaded. Try closing other application or reinstall driver." His HP USB printer would then no longer print. [Note: could this be another example of a problem due to the VSControlStrip file?]

Update: A reader replies: "This error usually indicates that the CFM could not load the printer driver due to lack of memory. Probably the UMAX software is using memory that was available before it was installed, and there is no longer enough memory free to print. Try adjusting memory settings (either the total amount of VM or the app's memory partition) or finding some other way to free up memory (e.g., reduce disk cache)."