Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

jszrules · May 8, 2006, 01:16 PM

Hi, whenever I restart my machine, the screen dimmer no longer works. I have to go back into System Preferences and unclick and reclick the checkbox next to the reducing brightness option. In other words, the option is still checked after a restart, but for some reason, the screen doesn't dim. Any ideas on how to fix this or why this happens? Thanks.

P · May 8, 2006, 06:11 PM

Looks like a preference file issue. Have you tried looking for relevant preference files (both in your user directory and the root Library) and trashing some?

jszrules · May 8, 2006, 09:02 PM

What would be considered relevant? I am not sure what to look for.

jszrules · Aug 1, 2006, 12:41 AM

bump

jszrules · Aug 6, 2006, 05:16 PM

anyone?

PER3 · Aug 6, 2006, 06:20 PM

I have no idea, but every time I restart, my menu bar is screwed. Especially 'Short name fast menu switching'. It gets superimposed against the few of the menu items my rig remembers.

At one stage, this behaviour seemed to correlate with my switching on of the Clam X anti virus tool, but now it isn't so predictable.

Something is up **** creek that I have to reset my menubar every time I have to, rarely, restart.

n8236 · Aug 7, 2006, 01:00 AM

jsrules, i have the EXACT same problem w/ the auto dim, everything i restart the damn mbp starts dimming itself w/o my persmission and have to manually check and uncheck it. It's so damn annoying and I don't know what the problem seems to be, I ran disk utility and no luck. blah.

jszrules · Aug 11, 2006, 11:10 PM

Originally Posted by P

Looks like a preference file issue. Have you tried looking for relevant preference files (both in your user directory and the root Library) and trashing some?

I am still wondering what's considered relevent and where to look...any suggestions?

P · Aug 13, 2006, 03:40 PM

Hey, I don't know exactly which file it is - open the Preferences folder and look. I opened both in Finder, used spotlight to show me just the files beginning with com.apple and found a bunch of interesting options - anything with a name that includes "display", "power", "energy", "screen"... Try removing it from its location and reboot to see what happens.

jszrules · Sep 2, 2006, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by P

Hey, I don't know exactly which file it is - open the Preferences folder and look. I opened both in Finder, used spotlight to show me just the files beginning with com.apple and found a bunch of interesting options - anything with a name that includes "display", "power", "energy", "screen"... Try removing it from its location and reboot to see what happens.

I might have found the right file...it's called com.apple.PowerManagement.plist inside Library->Preferences->SystemConfiguration. So you're saying it would be safe to move that to the desktop, restart, and see if anything changes? If it does change, then trash that file, and if it doesn't do anything, then move it back to its location?

P · Sep 3, 2006, 07:06 AM

Pretty much, yeah. On a Mac, removing a Preference file will always reset the prefs to the default. Do NOT try this on Windows or a UNIX derivative.

jszrules · Sep 26, 2006, 08:07 PM

I tried this procedure and it didn't work, the problem still persists...it must be another preference file, but I have no idea which one...
Thanks for the help so far.

jszrules · Nov 18, 2006, 12:08 PM

Any other possibilities?