Minimize button in window looses its functionality

Hello!

Something weird, in Tiger 10.4.11, just started happening to the minimize button in my windows.

I first noticed it in Safari, the yellow minimize button, when clicked doesn't work anymore after a certain time. Then I noticed that this happens in Mail.app as well except the button is completely greyed out. Even Command + M doesn't work. Then a few other apps act the same way, even Finder.

Googled it up and ended in Apple Discussions where this behaviour has been happening for a while and is still happening with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.x.

I tried clearing the various caches, running maintenance scripts from MainMenu, even quitting Finder but no joy. The only thing that seemed to fix it was restarting. But it would happen again not long after the restart!

So I decided to search Apple Discussions thoroughly and found a solution that works sometimes for some users.

One member there noticed this happened right after playing a game that uses full-screen mode and his solution was to go to System Preferences and change the Displays bitdepth to thousands of colours. This is what I did and it fixes it. Not a very elegant solution but it worked for me.

I also noticed that right after changing the bitdepth to thousands of colours, I could change it right back to millions of colours right away, the fix still held on.

So to summarize, it seems that this problem started in an early update to Tiger and is still going on in Leopard: the cause is pointing toward the way the OS and the display will interact with playing a game in full-screen mode. Maybe it could involve the graphics card's driver as well?

Oh and yes, I've been playing a game lately: Zamby, a cute kinda game.

So I posted this just in case some of you guys experience this quirky, very annoying behaviour as well.

Scratch that. The trick doesn't work anymore. Gah!

Saw this on an Apple Mailing List:

It's a bug in HIToolbox.. We've fixed it for Leopard, but unfortunately there's no way to avoid it on Tiger. You're not doing anything wrong yourself.

Click to expand...

But some Leopard users still report the same problem at Apple Discussions... Quitting the apps that have the problem and relaunching them brings back the functionality though. Definitely not an elegant solution...

sooo, may be a good thing i'm still on 10.4.9.

LOL

Do you play games in full-screen, eric? Wanna try the Zamby demo and see if you get this too?

not usually, my macbook always sounds like it's struggling too hard when i play most games, even heavy flash games get my fan going pretty good.

it does look interesting, i've downloaded e demo, i'll give it a shot in a while...

Kewl! I found that if I quit all apps before launching the game then only Finder is affected by this behaviour (well duh! It's the only thing that is running at the same time as the game is! ). I quit Finder, relaunch it and it's ok after that.

But really not very elegant again for a solution.

weird. i tried it.

finder kept it's yellow button, but safari lost it's yellow button.

i restarted safari, and now it works again.

Ahah! Must be something in the code of those games that cause this to happen then. Ok well at least I know it's not necessarily the OS version or anything in my user account.

Thanks eric!*





*Gotta spread the rep around...

happy to help. neat game too. not sure if i'd pay 20 bucks for it. maybe 10. for 20 i could buy a full featured ps2 or ds game.

LOL

Well it's got 150 levels so I guess the gameplay is worth it and I got a Xmas presie from someone so I have my license.

The beginning is easy but as you go along the levels, there are some doozies. I'm completely stumped so I play other levels while I try to figure out the toughies...