Command+tab, expose and many other functions stop working after screen sharing

When I'm away from my office mac I typically login via screen-sharing or VNC from home/another mac. Lately, after using screen sharing this way, my office mac will have several problems:

Command+tab and Command+` no longer work
Expose and other F-key functions no longer work
ctrl+space to launch Google QSB no longer works

Things I have tried to remedy this:

Restarting the Finder process
Restarting the Dock process
Disabling the screensaver
- Unfortunately, the screensaver still runs... A connected issue?
Deleting preference files for Dock/Finder/screensaver etc.

The only thing that seems to work is a restart. I usually try and avoid that.

System details:

Macbook pro 13"
OS v10.5.8

moshen

Posted 2010-02-03T17:57:32.980

Reputation: 1 800

Does killing the screensaver daemon or setting to a different screensaver not help? – ayaz – 2010-02-03T18:25:25.663

I didn't try setting another screensaver. I just changed the time to start to 'Never'. But killing the screensaver daemon does nothing. – moshen – 2010-02-03T18:27:16.110

It seems like the new version of Chromium is causing the problem. – moshen – 2010-02-08T20:40:17.807

Scratch that... Just had it recur. – moshen – 2010-02-10T20:42:50.980

Im stuck with this problem too. Looks like there is no solution – Yazz.com – 2010-03-28T16:08:14.783

I will be updating to Snow Leopard on one of my machines. I'll post if that fixes it. For some reason though it has been happening less frequently lately. – moshen – 2010-03-29T21:59:17.333

Did it disappear with 10.6? If so, maybe answer this question yourself ("was a bug, fixed by upgrading"?) and accept your answer – Daniel Beck – 2010-12-25T18:58:34.410

Answers

I've been trying to figure this out for some time. I think I found something that works. It worked for me just now without having to reboot.

First, go into your ScreenSharing application preferences and write down your settings (there are only a handful). Then quit ScreenSharing.

Next, go into your user directory in the Finder, then navigate to Library -> Preferences. It's important that you do this through your user folder and not through the Library folder that's on the root of your hard drive.

Once in your Preferences folder, delete com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist and com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist.lockfile (or you can add an arbitrary extension like .old to them if you want to play it safe and be able to re-use the old preferences files.

Finally, restart ScreenSharing. Re-enter any adjusted preferences for that application if you had any that you wrote down. Your F-keys, Cmd+Tab, Cmd+Space, and other keyboard shortcuts should once again be working.

Hopefully this will fix it for good. I suspect my preferences file was corrupted, and deleting it caused ScreenSharing to create a fresh one. Either way, it's an easier fix than having to reboot, so give it a shot.

Tyson

Posted 2010-02-03T17:57:32.980

Reputation: 36

This seems to have been resolved after upgrading to 10.6.* (not a reinstall, just upgrade)

No indication of what caused it originally.

moshen

Posted 2010-02-03T17:57:32.980

Reputation: 1 800