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Can't minimize windows...

spencecb

spencecb

Suspended
Original poster
What is the deal? Recently, I have noticed that I will come back to my iMac (specs in sig) and not be able to minimize the windows that I have open. The button is grayed out. If I were to relaunch or open a new application, then I can minimize them just fine.

Do you guys think the Dock is crashing? Because I don't think you get a notification if the Dock crashes...I could be wrong, though I don't ever remember seeing one.

OS X 10.4.7
 
Funnily enough, I was going to post the same thing. I just found the yellow button greyed out in Word, and had to Quit and re-Open to get it back again. Very odd.

I also found that Safari would not let me type in capitals: it kept reducing it to lower case. "Check spelling as you type" is greyed out. Is this normal?
 
skunk said:
Funnily enough, I was going to post the same thing. I just found the yellow button greyed out in Word, and had to Quit and re-Open to get it back again. Very odd.

I also found that Safari would not let me type in capitals: it kept reducing it to lower case. "Check spelling as you type" is greyed out. Is this normal?
Click to expand...

I have no idea...The spelling checkers is usually greyed out unless you are specifically in a text box. I'm just more concerned why my damn computer won't let me minimize windows when I want to...It is so weird, it doesn't do it all the time, but since I haven't relaunsed iChat since I posted this earlier, I still can't minimize any windowns withing iChat, even new chats that come up.
 
This bug used to pop up once in a while here...usually restarting the app fixes it, but sometimes a full reboot or logout is required. I don't know if anybody ever really tracked down the cause of it, but I haven't seen it come up very often recently.

Can you use Command-M to minimize?
 
I've had all those same problems as well. And no, the command-M minimize doesn't work. In fact the minimize button is grayed out when it happens, like the option is totally removed. It's usually isolated to a particular app (in my case Safari most of the time). But sometimes will affect the whole OS.

Other odd things as mentioned have also happened. I usually restart the app and things seem to be okay. Sometimes I do need to do a restart and that seems to cure all. Of course the paranoid person I am, I tend to follow that with a disk check and permission repair just in case. 😕
 
WildCowboy said:
This bug used to pop up once in a while here...usually restarting the app fixes it, but sometimes a full reboot or logout is required. I don't know if anybody ever really tracked down the cause of it, but I haven't seen it come up very often recently.

Can you use Command-M to minimize?
Click to expand...

No, Command-M does not work in this case. And to Foxglove, this bug is affecting my entire system, but as I stated above, it only affects programs that I leave running. When I launch a new app, or restart one that was running, the problem seems to be corrected.
 
Well, I went ahead and repaired permissions (even though this is in debate of what good it actually does) and booted into OS X on my install DVD to run the Disk Utility and Repair the disk. It did say that minor repair was needed on the Disk Header, and then it was fine.

It remains to be seen if this does anything for the bug I was talking about. It is pretty random, so it may take me a few days to see if it actually helped out or not.
 
One more thing, of note, I have never experienced this on my MacBook Pro. It has only been on my iMac G5...maybe this is a problem that is isolated to the PowerPC build of OS X?
 
spencecb said:
One more thing, of note, I have never experienced this on my MacBook Pro. It has only been on my iMac G5...maybe this is a problem that is isolated to the PowerPC build of OS X?
Click to expand...
In my case, it's a Cube, so the PPC theory might hold. It's exactly the same here: it only happens if I've left an app open.
 
Compile 'em all said:
I have a powerbook G4 and have never experienced such a thing. What
applications were you running when this occured?
Click to expand...

Mine happened on a G5 on Tiger. Also running standard programs, Adobe CS1 apps, Safari, Mail, Preview. That's about it.

I tend to notice it happened after Safari crashes about a dozen times and I never restart. Wierd things eventually happen. Or it could be RAM issues and memory leaks, which I get too. Restarting usually fixes it.
 
Compile 'em all said:
I have a powerbook G4 and have never experienced such a thing. What
applications were you running when this occured?
Click to expand...

iChat, Mail, Safari, iTunes, CS2, maybe one or two others.

Also, this just started happening about a week ago, and I have been using OS X since 10.0. I did recently re-install OS X on my iMac, because I was having some issues with games crashing the entire system, and thought there might be corruption on my HDD.
 
That sounds weird. FYI, the apps I have running everyday are Terminal,
VLC, iTunes, Adium, Opera, Limewire, and Quicktime. I don't have MS Office
or Photoshop and I don't use Mail or iChat.

My advice is to try and isolate the problem using the divide and conquer
technique. First, stop using safari (i.e use FF or Opera) for a while and see if
the problem presists. If it does then move on to the next app and so on.
 
Compile 'em all said:
That sounds weird. FYI, the apps I have running everyday are Terminal,
VLC, iTunes, Adium, Opera, Limewire, and Quicktime. I don't have MS Office
or Photoshop and I don't use Mail or iChat.

My advice is to try and isolate the problem using the divide and conquer
technique. First, stop using safari (i.e use FF or Opera) for a while and see if
the problem presists. If it does then move on to the next app and so on.
Click to expand...

This would take an impossibly long amount of time, as the problem is so sporadic, at least in my case. It would almost be more of a waste of time to do something like this, as not being able to minimize a window isn't really that big of a deal to me...I was just curios to see if others were having this problem and if there was a known fix.
 
spencecb said:
This would take an impossibly long amount of time, as the problem is so sporadic, at least in my case. It would almost be more of a waste of time to do something like this, as not being able to minimize a window isn't really that big of a deal to me...I was just curios to see if others were having this problem and if there was a known fix.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think we're both safe, and since it is so sporadic we probably should've worry much about it. I will say it doesn't have to do with hard drive errors, or finder errors because when it happens and I run disk utilities everything checks out okay. I'm blaming it on corrupted ram, or too much uptime 🙂
 
I used to encounter similar problems occasionally also. In my case, I finally realised they coincided with playing a game which utilised the full screen (Tomb Raider Chronicles, btw). Something about having to switch between the game's resolution and the desktop would somehow cause the minimise button to be greyed-out on some apps - most often Safari. Don't know if this is any help or not.
 
Okay, the problem just happened to me in Mail. Apps I have open are Safari, Mail, Photoshop CS1, iCal, and Preview. Wasn't doing anything unusual except for switching apps. However I don't know if this just happened right now or earlier in the evening. But it did happen sometime today.

Photo is attached.

What's interesting is I did play 2 games (Ultratron and Grid Wars) earlier this evening, both which change screen size, so perhaps that did have something to do with it like someone suggested 😕
 

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