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Screensaver engine prevents insertion of CDs System
There is a bug in Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar)'s Screen Saver Engine. While it is running, your Mac cannot mount external media (CDs, etc.). If you try to insert a CD, your drive will spit it back out at you after a few seconds. If you run a screensaver as your desktop background (see this hint), you will notice this fairly quickly.

I spent four hours trying to troubleshoot my OS because I thought that the problem was linked to my recent deletion of the dock application. Turns out, there are no side effects from removing the Dock that caused the problem I was experiencing. So now I just turn off the screen saver desktop whenever I want to insert or eject a CD (I use CoolBackground v2.1). Hope this information proves helpful.

[Editor's note: I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature - I think it could it be considered a security risk to allow insertion of a CD when a (possibly secured) screensaver is active. Either way, this is good information to know if you use the screensaver desktop feature in Jaguar.]
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Screensaver engine prevents insertion of CDs | 12 comments | Create New Account
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THANK YOU!
Authored by: jecwobble on Feb 06, '03 10:45:21AM

I've been racking my brain for the past few days. I recently started using DeskSaver at login to manage my desktop screensaver feature (which I love, by the way). But when I popped in TurboTax the other day, it spit right back out. DVDs and other CDs did the same thing. I tried every key word search I could think of at Apple and here to no avail. I was going to go home this afternoon and call Apple. But I'm almost positive this is my problem- I'll go home and give it a try!

Thanks again!



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THANK YOU!
Authored by: f1rehead on Feb 06, '03 11:52:48AM
The weird thing is that this 'problem' (or 'feature') does not happen to everyone. I'm running DeskSaver right now and can mount network file servers, CD-ROMs, audio CDs, and DVDs without any problem. There is a paragraph in the DeskSaver help about this, but I guess that's not enough. I'll put the info in a more prominent place in the next version (1.1 will be out any day now). BTW, jecwobble -- Thanks for using DeskSaver! I was completely surprised to see that someone was!

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passwords?
Authored by: robg on Feb 06, '03 12:02:49PM

Do you, by chance, have a password on your screensaver or not?

-rob.



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passwords?
Authored by: tobyc on Feb 06, '03 12:58:36PM

I haven't been having this problem at all. I am using xBack for my screensaver desktop.



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passwords? YES
Authored by: jecwobble on Feb 06, '03 01:12:40PM
Now that you mention it, I do. I'll log on as my son (no password) and set up DeskSaver and give it another try. I looked at the console.log file and only found this line:
Feb  6 05:17:31 iMac /sbin/autodiskmount[198]: disk2s1s2  hfs      no
    no    TurboTax Deluxe Mac 2002 [not mounted]
I'm unfamiliar with autodiskmount (not quite a year old in UNIX terms), so I have no idea what the two "no"s are about, but I'll bet they are significant. I'll compare the log without DeskSaver running on my account, as well as with it running on my son's account.

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passwords?
Authored by: davidnorton on Feb 06, '03 09:24:14PM

I just did a highly scientific experiment:

* Eject Civilization CD-ROM
* Put mouse in corner to turn on screensaver (I have an active corner set)
* Push CD back in
* The CD spins up and all, and the computer slows for a few seconds.
* Move mouse, screensaver wakes up - iTunes has opened for the audio portion of the CD. It has obviously mounted.
* Eject CD.
* Go into System Prefs, and turn on the password protection in the Screen Effects pane.
* Put mouse in corner again.
* Stuck CD in again
* Spins up, spins down, and ejects.
* Move mouse, type in my password.

Conclusion: CD is only prevented from mounting if the password is enabled. This must, in fact, be a security feature and not a bug.



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passwords?
Authored by: keaka on Feb 13, '03 02:56:20PM

I agree, this is certainly a security feature. With a password protected screensaver you really would not want people to be able to insert and eject removable media. As somebody mentioned earlier, automounting could be used to kill the password protected screen saver. Similarly, without this feature, somebody could come up to your password protected computer, press the F12 key to eject your cd, then walk away with your precious data. This security feature isn't necessary when running a screen saver in background mode, but for now it appears that we have to choose between a password protected screen saver and pretty desktop effects.



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You're welcome.
Authored by: jecwobble on Feb 06, '03 01:16:44PM

I realize I could probably write an AppleScript to automate the CLI stuff necessary for this, but I certainly appreciate your efforts so I don't have to. I especially like the 'niceness' feature.



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It's a feature
Authored by: VEGx on Feb 06, '03 01:27:52PM
It's obviously a security feature. It's not too dificult to write a CD that has a "startup" script. If you have protected your computer with a screen saver... obviously, you don't want other people be able to access your computer.

kill -9 `ps -axcopid,command|awk '{if($2 ~ /ScreenSaverEn/) print $1}'`
That's all you need to kill the screen saver, password protected or not.

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No it doesn't
Authored by: codec3 on Feb 06, '03 05:59:28PM

at least not on my dual 1.25 using "Cool Background" with the Solar Winds 'saver.
codec3



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Locked screen does this too, & a warning!!
Authored by: sebastienb on Feb 06, '03 10:10:26PM

Found this out when I tried to eject a CD; the only problem is that the system puts up a error dialog, in rapid succession, until you get back to the screen, then you have to dismiss all those dialogs!!



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Screensaver engine prevents insertion of CDs
Authored by: memco on Mar 31, '05 03:56:25AM

The screensaver background hack disables many features. Anyone find a way to re-enable things like cmd+tab or universal access features? Or any fix for everything it disables?



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