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Slideshow screen saver stuck at "Loading Photos..."

M

mlsusa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 17, 2012
205
85
Hi all,

Recently my Slideshow screen saver gets stuck at "Loading Photos..." I can't say for sure exactly when I started noticing it but I'll say at least 2 weeks. The most I've waited was 10 minutes to see if it was just taking longer to load vs. it's a real problem. I'll say it's a real problem.

Here are other details I can think of:
  • I have a late 2012 i7 27" iMac with a 768gb SSD and 24gb of RAM (the 8gb factory installed and 16gb Crucial after market)
  • Mountain Lion is up-to-date at 10.8.4
  • My screensaver is set to kick in after 20 minutes
  • After initially logging in, the first few times the screensaver kicks in the slide show does start. But after a few hours it stops being able to load the photos, getting stuck at the "Loading Photos..." message.
  • This happens even when there are no user applications running
  • At first I was rebooting to fix the problem. But actually logging out and back in was good enough. However the problem comes back after a few hours after doing either so neither was a permanent solution.
  • Getting stuck at "Loading Photos..." also happens when I go to System Preferences, go to Desktop & Screen Saver, and try to preview the slide show from there
  • I use an iPhoto album as the slide show source. It is a smart album made up of 3 other albums. There are currently about 25k photos total, with one of the albums having over 15k. The full iPhoto library is about 260gb, the album I use is about 125gb. I've done this for several years and haven't seen a problem until now.
  • Thinking it was an issue with the iPhoto library I've fully rebuilt it a few times. No luck.
  • Many 1000s of the photos in the library are stored in a NAS. I thought that could be it, but when I tried using /Library/Desktop Pictures which is in my localdisk the issue happens with that as well. Pretty much when the problem starts it doesn't matter what I use as the source. So I don't think it's because the size of my iPhoto library has reached the tipping point nor is it the NAS.
  • I've tried a few times to delete the com.apple.screensaver.* files in ~/Library/Preferences and then rebooted. The problem persists.
  • It happens whether the machine goes to sleep or only the screen goes to sleep.

Can someone give me pointers on what else I can do to try to track down the problem?

Thanks in advance.
 
G

gudac

macrumors newbie
Oct 14, 2003
2
0
Brownsville, Pa
similar issues

In my case the issue occurs where the Screen Saver attempts to start. It indicates "Loading Photos" but never does. When I exit the screen saver I get a dialog box that says can't access the server. I spent several days deleting preferences and such but couldn't pinpoint the exact culprit. What really confuses the heck out of me was that after getting the screen saver working on my MacBook Pro the same issue happened on my Mac Pro.

The problem returned again on my MacBook Pro and I am thinking it is related to the issue with iPhoto. Even though I don't use photos from it for the screen saver I cleared my problem after deleting the items in the following folder.

`User/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement

This cleared my problem on my MacBook Pro.
 
F

freudsigmund

macrumors newbie
Sep 8, 2013
2
0
slideshow screensaver malfunctions.... still

Has anyone found a solution to this problem. I am experiencing exactly the same as Joe Gudac. Whenever the slideshow-screensaver is activated (even if that is in the example window in systempreferences, it remains stuck at loading photo's and causes a warning box that some external HD cannot be found.

I have tried reinstalling ML, rebuilding the Aperture library, deleting all sorts of .plist files mentioned in several fora, but nothing seems to remove the link to the HD that no longer exists.

As far as I can tell it's not that complicated, since the problem only seems to be in a reference. The only issue then is how to alter that reference.

Any help is much appreciated since Apple appearently don't care :( (this problem is also discussed in their own forums). How can I:
a) delete the file with the incorrect reference or
b) alter that file to chance the reference so that the slideshow screensaver can select an iPhoto or Aperture library?
 
M

mlsusa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 17, 2012
205
85
Sorry I stopped tracking my thread when there weren't any responses the first couple of weeks. I wound up calling AppleCare and the tech suggested I remove the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences (or something like that) file, which seemed to solve my problem. I haven't had a recurrence of the issue since.

Hope that helps.
 
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