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crazydreaming

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I've been having this problem for a while, it is quite frequent, at first I didn't think anything of it, but it keeps reaccuring.

For example, two nights ago I left safari, itunes, mail, and adium open. When I came back to my powerbook in the morning, everything was still running fine, however, I could not move or resize any of the windows! The only solution is to quit the apps. When you open the app back up, it opens in the spot you were trying to move it to before you were forced to quit it. :eek:

Today, after my powerbook has been in my backpack all day (sleeping), I opened up my powerbook in which I had mail and finder open. Mail was working, but it couldn't move anywhere, and finder was stuck also.

Very annoying and wierd.
 
If when you try and click and drag does the mouse just go where you move without the window?

If it does then your mouse might not be able to read if it is being held down. try to hold down an app on the dock and see if the little contextual(?) menu pops up. If it doesnt then that might be the problem.
 
Apple said:
If when you try and click and drag does the mouse just go where you move without the window?

If it does then your mouse might not be able to read if it is being held down. try to hold down an app on the dock and see if the little contextual(?) menu pops up. If it doesnt then that might be the problem.

I waited to reply until it did it again and I could pay attention to what I said.

iTunes is doing it now. Yes, the mouse moves, but the window doesn't. So I clicked and held down on iTunes in the dock, and the menu still comes up. Is that what you are referring to? Thanks!
 
That's very weird. Make a new user account and see whether the problem persists in there. That'll help narrow down the problem to either a system-wide fault, or something restricted to your account.
 
Nermal said:
That's very weird. Make a new user account and see whether the problem persists in there. That'll help narrow down the problem to either a system-wide fault, or something restricted to your account.

If that's what it's gonna take, I'll do it, it's just not going to be fun. It sometimes can be a while until it happens. So I could spend a whole day using an account that is not my main setup account with all my files. :(
 
Hmmmm...suggestions and questions:

- It wasn't clear if you ever restarted your computer? If you didn't, try it.
- Have you tried restarting finder? You can do this by selecting force quit from the Apple menu and then highlighting Finder and hitting the restart button.
- Have you tried executing "killall Dock" from the terminal?

I'm not entirely clear why those would fix this, but they're always worth a try. :eek:

Now the questions:

- Is this trackpad only, or have you tried this with a mouse too?
- In System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Trackpad, which buttons are checked in the bottom half of the pane? In particular, do you have the drag or drag-lock gesture enabled?
 
I have a suggestion, but it's kind of a long shot.

Go to /Users/<your user>/Library/Preferences/

Move the file com.apple.finder.plist to somewhere else, like to your Documents folder. Then log out and log in again.


Noone has asked if you have installed any skins or similar system hacks. Have you? That can sometimes cause problems.
 
-I have restarted
-I have restarted the finder when it went, because it is the only way to get anything working again when it happens.
-Have not tried the terminal command. I've never used terminal much, but I'll give it a try.
-happens with both trackpad and mouse
-no drag-lock tap
 
happened again: :mad:

This time it was with mail. Only this time, mail eventually locked up, nothing would work in Mail, but, force quit did not show up in the dock, I just quit normally.

The problem with trying a lot of things such as moving preference files around etc. is that I won't know right away if it solved the problem or not... See what I mean?
 
It's only two things it can be... remember, there are no real extension conflicts any more. Recurring issues that involve different apps points to either a system SW problem or a hard drive problem. Enable root, and log in as such. Does it happen? Boot in safe mode. Does it happen? Use the hardware disk that came with the PB. I like the idea of a new user too.
But save yourself a lot of time. Back up your files and start over. Too often folks try and try and try. Too darned much time wasted.
One other thing I have seen were freezes when using auto mounted volumes... like iDisk. If you have iDisk, turn it off.
 
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