mac os X problems

May 18, 2005 3:36 PM

I have two niggling little problems with my mac. First, the screensaver comes on when my mac is idle. I know about my control panels, and the screen saver is, and always has been, set to never. My desktop pic also changes at startup and it too is set to never. Also, when I drag a picture from a website to my desktop, using safari, I get a jpeg icon on my desktop. When I use explorer, the image is a viewable thumbnail. Upgrading to Tiger didn't help. Any ideas?
posted by vronsky to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

The first two sound like corrupted preferences. Quit System Preferences, and then in your home folder, go to Library > Preferences and delete com.apple.desktop.plist. In Library > Preferences > ByHost delete com.apple.screensaver.whatever.plist. Logout and back in.

For the last part, click the desktop and then select Show View Options from the View menu, and tick Show icon preview.
posted by cillit bang at 4:15 PM on May 18, 2005

Response by poster: Wow, that was easy! Many thanks c.b.
posted by vronsky at 5:01 PM on May 18, 2005

By the way, Preferential Treatment is a small (367k download) AppleScript app for OSX that will scan your preference files for corruption.
posted by blueberry at 11:27 AM on May 20, 2005