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Screensaver issues, completely baffled

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Jul 16, 2014
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Motherboard
MSI Z590 MEG ACE
CPU
i9-10900k
Graphics
RX 6900 XT
Mac
  1. Mac mini
Classic Mac
  1. PowerBook
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hello all, I'm completely at a loss here.
Gigabyte Z97MX Gaming-5 BIOS F7c
GTX-980 TI
32GB DDR3 RAM 1333mhz
Sierra 10.12.1
Samsung 850 EVO SSD with TRIM enabled

I had an issue with Photos causing my Mac to crash while it was analyzing photos in the background - I fixed that by lowering my RAM frequency to stock levels.

But now I have this super friggin weird issue. I have a screen saver set - any particular screensaver, doesn't matter - and it is set to come on after 10 minutes. After running for a minute, it will then require my password to unlock. Power settings is set for display to sleep after an hour, and never for the computer to sleep.

At first everything worked fine. Then one day, it would fail to load the screensaver, instead displaying the default "Computer Name" text and Apple logo screensaver. I tried changing the screensaver from Flurry to Arabesque, to XMatrix, to a photo ones. They all work if I preview them but when it tries to load after 10 minutes, it loads the name and logo one.

That would be fine if it weren't for the lag when logging back in. There is a 5 to 10 second lag where I can move the mouse but input isn't recognized. System Preferences won't load during this time - it'll crash if I try. Microsoft Word, if running, will crash and issue a crash report. All other apps (Safari, Excel, Powerpoint, everything that I've tried) still work after the lag stops.

I tried a new account with nothing loaded, and to my surprise, it worked fine! Exactly as I'd expect everytime. SO I created a third account and moved all my stuff over. Worked great all day. And then I converted some videos using Smart Converter 2 Pro - it started doing the wrong screen saver + lag again. AGH. So I deleted the app, nuked all of my preference.plists, restarted and voila - it's working again! Tested it three times, and it was working. Or so I thought....

Fast forward to this morning. Decided to test it. Three times in a row, it failed to load the right screensaver. Word crashed as expected. I'm at a total loss. Console wasn't much of a help to me, but if it may help someone here help me, I'll post what it says. There is a crash reported around when the screensaver starts, but I think it's irrelevant.

Anyone have any idea? I feel like it's not the way the hackintosh is set up since a fresh account fixes the issue, and deleting all the preference files fixes it too. I'm at a loss :C I can't keep losing my work in Word every time I walk away from my computer...

TL: DR - Mac is failing to load correct screensaver, lags when logging back in, Word crashes.
 
Anyone? Here is an attached screenshot of console. The screensaver started with the last minute of logging since it didn't ask for the password yet. No idea what all these uuidtext errors are about :(

I tried uninstalling iStat Menus but that didn't help.

IMG_0462.PNG

This is driving me up a wall!
 
Annnnnd it's not working again. Only things I've run are Safari, Word, Preview, and iTunes. I'm wondering if iTunes is the culprit. Everything worked, waiting to see if the screen saver would load after each application; it worked after each. Decided to reboot, the screen saver loaded once but when I went to log in, there was an issue with the window renderer. Restarted, and now the screensaver and lag issue is back.

AGH

EDIT: Not iTunes. Deleting just those preferences files didn't fix it.
 
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Uuuuugh. Still can't get this to work, on the verge of crying and giving up. It worked for two days by setting the screensaver to come on in 5 minutes. Worked flawlessly.

Now the screensaver loads properly, but the window server or something crashes upon trying to exit. I wonder if it's the nVidia driver crashing - upon logging in I still have the proper resolution, but the screen-redrawing rate is abysmal and there are artifacts everywhere. Doesn't require a reboot to fix it though - log out and log back in resolves it.

Surely someone has seen something like this??

Also can't get my SSDT/power management working.
 
Tried deleting, reinstalling and updating nVidia graphics drivers, no help. Switched from osxaptiofixdrv to osxaptiofix2drv, no help.

It's getting worse - if I can get it out of the screen saver, the whole system freezes except for the mouse cursor - which is free to move around - for 10 seconds, then unfreezes, freezes a bit more, and then is in the clear.
 
Do you really need a screensaver ? Can't you just sleep the monitor after 10 minutes inactivity ?
 
Do you really need a screensaver ? Can't you just sleep the monitor after 10 minutes inactivity ?

That works - but it seems to me that a screensaver should be a super basic thing for a computer to do. Plus I generally use it for security reasons - but I suppose having the monitor go to sleep does the same thing.

Just... would be nice if it just worked, you know?
 
Just... would be nice if it just worked, you know?

Agreed, if it is included it should work.
Screensavers were introduced (as the name implies) to protect the old CRT monitors from screen burn which occurred when the desktop didn't change for long periods of time when the computer was left unattended.
Today it is much less of a problem with the modern flat panel displays but can still happen.
Fortunately the security issue is not a problem for me as I have no need to lock my computers to prevent access by others.
 
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