Powerbook Display issue / Quartz extreme not working(?)

[sansserifgrafik]

ive got a Powerbook Titanium 800mhz 1gig ram + 60gb HD.

I use screen effects 'flurry' for the screensaver. thats the program with the coloured lines that bounce around the screen.. In the last week the performance of the screensaver has gone from what i consider normal (what looks like 25 frames per second or more) to what now appears to be about 1 framesper second and obviously looks like the Mac is struggling..

Also, my desktop picture is set to rotate randomly every 5 minutes. . normally the mac would fade between one desktop to the next. now it simply displays the new one with no transition at all.

ive zapped PRam, NVram and used jaguar cache cleaner to do all kinds of things but to no avail.

I was recently working with some very large photoshop files and Photoshop asked me to set some scratch disk preferences and said that the primary scratch disk is almost full (startup disk) yet the finder says that it has over 35gb free space (60gb total)
.

someone suggested it may be a Quartz / Quartz Extreme problem so i downoaded the 'Quartz Extreme Check' app which says this display is not accelerated.

Im running 10.2.6 which i thought made Quartz Exteme standard? the Powerbook has the radeon mobility 7500 which is capable of driving quarts Extreme..

anyone got any clues?

any help will be greatly appreciated.
thanks.

 

[shadowfax]

did you do the classic "repair disk permissions" from disk utility? considering that your drive size is being confused by photoshop, i would suspect such. be sure and try that if you haven't. other than that, i can of course assure you that your laptop is Quartz Extreme compliant and should under proper circumstances be using it. it's been here since 10.2, not 10.2.6.

 

[sansserifgrafik]

Yes i have repaired the disk permissons twice now. the photoshop scratch errors aren't occuring anymore but the screen effects performance is still SCREWED.

ive never reinstalled OSX before but have quite a bit of OS9 maintenance under my belt,

is there some kind of core system reinstall or something that i can try that wont disturb too many of my customised settings or applications?
thanks.

 

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by sansserifgrafik
Yes i have repaired the disk permissons twice now. the photoshop scratch errors aren't occuring anymore but the screen effects performance is still SCREWED.

ive never reinstalled OSX before but have quite a bit of OS9 maintenance under my belt,

is there some kind of core system reinstall or something that i can try that wont disturb too many of my customised settings or applications?
thanks.

yes. if you put in the OS X install disk and, when the option to customize your installation is offered, you opt to "archive and install," it reinstalls the OS X system, without touching your user files or apps. it's worth a shot, though not as effective as a clean install.

 

[OutThere]

Photoshop uses a scratch disk to hold files and stuff while you use them, in OS 9 the stuff from the scratch disk would appear in the "rescued items" folder in the trash after you restarted. The problem might be that the cache of files was not emptied, so your hard drive is very full, and the finder isn't reporting it. This would be an explanation of the poor performance.

BTW, how do you get your destop picture to change every five minutes?

 

[shadowfax]

Originally posted by OutThere761
BTW, how do you get your destop picture to change every five minutes?

right click the desktop image (or ctrl click), select "change desktop image." then, on the bottom of the preference pane, select the check box for "change image every..." and then select 5 minutes from the drop down menu there. this will cycle through the folder of your choice, as selected in the menu just above that.