Need Help with strange artifacts on iBook G4

[ftaok]

Hey all,

I have a co-worker who just bought a new G4 iBook (1.42ghz, Tiger, 512MB, Superdrive). He's having a few wierd problems and I couldn't fix them. Thought I toss it out here to see if one of MR's finest could figure it out.

1. He's got some weird boxes that show up on his desktop. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason on when and where they show up. For instance, clicking on a link in Safari will make a box show up. I realize that it's hard to explain, that's why I took some screen shots.

You can see weird boxes. The first one has a small square box over to the left. The second picture has a larger rectangular box just under the URL box on Safari.

One thing I guess I should mention is that he has the Universal Access turned on for that voice thing. So when you click on an icon, the voice will state what it is. I don't know why he has it turned on, he doesn't have any physical limitations or anything. Thought that might be helpful for this one.

2. The second thing that's going on is that his Safari is getting slow. When his iBook was hooked up to the company LAN, getting to webpages seemed awfully slow. I would type in an address like yahoo.com and the status bar moved about 5%, then it would stop for about 5-10 seconds. Then the status would get to about 85% and most of the page would be loaded (except for images). Another 5-10 seconds for the rest of the page to finish loading. Normally, on our company network, you can get to yahoo in less than a second.

He also said that this was happening at home. Although that problem is mostly with his PC desktop. It's a recent phenonema

Any ideas? Weird, huh?

3. He's also having problems with his Linksys WRT54g router. He has Comcast at home and has his router connected to the modem. His desktop PC is connected to the router via Ethernet. He cannot connect his iBook to the router via 11g. I've gotten him to power cycle everything and he still can't connect wirelessly. I told him to plug the iBook to the router to see if that works.

I checked his settings for Airport and he's got everything (seemingly) right. DHCP, blah blah... The only thing I could think of is that the router is not set-up properly. I told him to set it up as a DHCP router and make sure the wireless signal is broadcast. I know my Netgear has a feature to turn off wireless so that it's just a regular router. Not sure about the Linksys.

I also set him up with MacStumbler to see if his router is putting out a network signal.

Any help would be appreciated. We're talking new switcher here so helping him out is important.

Thanks.

ft

 

[yellow]

First step: Does this (boxes, safari slowness) happen if he logs in as another user to test it?

 

[mad jew]

Also, any theme changing apps or hacks we should know about?

 

[doucy2]

wow i never seen anything like those boxes

hope you get your issues resolved, (i am not a mac tech by any standard)

i say give apple a call, he paid all that money for that ibook, why not have it working right

 

[ftaok]

First step: Does this (boxes, safari slowness) happen if he logs in as another user to test it?

That's a good first step. Hadn't thought of it. I'm sure that he hasn't tried it. I was going to do the standard "Repair Permissions", delete preferences method of troubleshooting, but I had to get back to my desk.

I'll mention these tricks to him.

But, do you agree that the boxes are strange?

 

[mad jew]

But, do you agree that the boxes are strange?

Yeah, but I've seen them before on Panther. I can't for the life of me remember the fix though, I'll keep looking.

 

[yellow]

I suspect a rogue plug-in that the user threw at Safari. He might say he didn't install anything, but users ALWAYS lie.

 

[Spievy]

I have seen these in Excel, but if you close the spreadsheet they go away.

Although what I have seen is more than likely a bug in excel, go figure

 

[ftaok]

To my knowledge, he hasn't used any theme changing apps or plug-ins. In fact, I checked his Widgets to see if he had any weird ones, but he had only standard Apple Widgets.

I can say that these boxes were there when he first bought the iBook. He brought it into work the next day and I immediately noticed it, but I thought it was something to do with Universal Access.

I think he is going to take it into the Apple Store to have someone there look at it, but that was mainly for the Safari slowness issue.

ft

 

[mad jew]

One thing I guess I should mention is that he has the Universal Access turned on for that voice thing. So when you click on an icon, the voice will state what it is. I don't know why he has it turned on, he doesn't have any physical limitations or anything. Thought that might be helpful for this one.

Hmm... This rings a bell. In System Preferences, under the Universal Access Pain, the Seeing tab gives an Options link for Zoom and inside there's a check box for Show Preview Rectangle When Zoomed Out. From memory, the rectangles had something to do with this being turned on (ticked).

 

[ftaok]

Hmm... This rings a bell. In System Preferences, under the Universal Access Pain, the Seeing tab gives an Options link for Zoom and inside there's a check box for Show Preview Rectangle When Zoomed Out. From memory, the rectangles had something to do with this being turned on (ticked).

This may be it. I did look at the Universal Access System Pref, but I couldn't determine which box I should uncheck. I'll try it out at home to see if I can duplicate it on my iBook. Hopefully that'll resolve the weir box issues.

ft

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, I'm having no luck duplicating it but from memory it was a conflict with this check box and something else. Sorry, it's coming back s-l-o-w-l-y.

You know which check box I'm talking about, right? It's quite hidden and my explanation is testament to the time of the day (before 9:00AM).

 

[ftaok]

Yeah, I'm having no luck duplicating it but from memory it was a conflict with this check box and something else. Sorry, it's coming back s-l-o-w-l-y.

You know which check box I'm talking about, right? It's quite hidden and my explanation is testament to the time of the day (before 9:00AM).

mad jew,

Thanks for the help. For the record, it's 5PM here and I'm tired from a full day of work. I'm hitting the road and when I get home, I can play around with my iBook.

Hopefully, I can resolve his problem(s). Otherwise, he can get the Apple Genius to fix it.

Thanks.

ft

 

[mad jew]

For the record, I remember that unchecking that box got rid of the rectangles.

The router problem's a little more difficult without having access to more information such as the type of security. Does the iBook recognise the thing at all? What did MacStumbler say? Sometimes you have to put a $ in front of the password although it sounds like we're not even getting to this stage.

And Safari, well tell him to reset it and if that does nothing then trash his preference file.

 

[ftaok]

For the record, I remember that unchecking that box got rid of the rectangles.

The router problem's a little more difficult without having access to more information such as the type of security. Does the iBook recognise the thing at all? What did MacStumbler say? Sometimes you have to put a $ in front of the password although it sounds like we're not even getting to this stage.

And Safari, well tell him to reset it and if that does nothing then trash his preference file.

OK, I just checked on my iBook. I was able to get the boxes to show up when I checked the Voice Utility box. Incidentally, on my slow-ass iBook 500, there's a slight lag when switching windows, so the box will remain there for a split second. Apparently, on his brand new iBook, there's a problem because the box will stay there indefinately. Clicking on icons and stuff moves the box around. It's strange. I'll have him turn off the Voice Utility.

As for the other stuff, that may be a little harder to diagnose. Trashing the plist file may help, but the thing that confuses me is that he said the slow internet thing started on his PC at home. And it kind of spread over to his iBook. Of course, this guy is a total rookie when it comes to computers, but this sounds strange.

Anyways, thanks for the help.

ft

 

[mad jew]

As for the other stuff, that may be a little harder to diagnose. Trashing the plist file may help, but the thing that confuses me is that he said the slow internet thing started on his PC at home. And it kind of spread over to his iBook. Of course, this guy is a total rookie when it comes to computers, but this sounds strange.

Yeah, that's why I'm a bit hesitant to do anything about Safari before we get this router problem sorted.

 

[ftaok]

Update

Just in case anyone was still wondering, I'm updating the situation.

1. Wierd boxes - Turning off the "Voice Over" in Universal Access got rid of the boxes.

2. Slow Safari - I tried his iBook on the company network again and it was fine. Pages loaded snappily. So we thought that the Voice Over option may have been the culprit. So we turned Voice Over back on and checked Safari. From a naked eye, it looks like pages loaded slightly slower with Voice Over on. Didn't have a stopwatch, though.

3. Router problems - my co-worker tried most of the things I told him to do, over the weekend. He tried Macstumbler and could not find a network, even when he was right next to the router. He's boxing it up and returning it. May be a bum router.

Thanks for all of the help.

ft