The title says it all. I just got home with a new CF card, and wanted to zero it out before formatting, but disk Utility wouldn't start up. So I was going to do it in Terminal, but the window just says "Command Completed." See the screenshot. So then I wanted to take a screenshot to post here, but it wouldn't work! I had to take this screenshot from my MacBook with screen sharing.

PowerMac G5 running 10.4.11

Reboot? (the machine)

Ok, the plot thickens...

Just for grins, I decided to mount a disk image, and got the message that the image couldn't be mounted because too many processes were running. Looking in Activity Monitor, I can see something like fifty instances of ScreenSaverEngin running under my account (I forgot to mention that all apps work in my "guest" account).

Umm... so, yeah. I switched from Electric Sheep to a stock OS X screensaver, trashed Electric Sheep, logged out and back in, but things are still wonky.

I'm planning on putting in a couple of new hard drives next weekend, so this normally wouldn't be that big a deal. But I'm shooting a wedding tomorrow, and would LOVE to not have to set up a new user account to edit the photos. Any ideas?

Use the camera to format the card?

Well, yeah, that's all well and good, and I could even use this MacBook to zero the card, but I really need this computer to work for more important stuff for the next few days.

You do know that you can "kill" processes directly from Activity Monitor, right? Of course, if things are working OK from your Guest account, then something is hosed in your normal account.

Yeah, I quit all of them from Activity Monitor and everything's fine. But I'm afraid to log out or anything.

Got a TM volume or a duplicate boot volume? Got DW or TTPro? Gotta check that drive.

Did you say screen savers?

Some things never change.

Self inflicted wound.

Maybe try AppCleaner to clear put all the parts?

Well, I'm not so sure it's Electric Sheep's fault. This installation is like five years old; by far the longest any of my Macs has gone without a reinstall. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, eh?


But like I say, I'm overhauling this machine in the next week or so, so as long as I can use it to edit the shoot tomorrow, it's all good.