Hey, all...why is everything on my screen, er, moving around all of a sudden?

[BlueIris]

2005 G-5 running System 10.4...suddenly, for seemingly no reason, every time I move the mouse, everything shifts. Safari window, desktop background, etc. It's creepy. (I think a cat must have walked on the keyboard while I wasn't looking.) So...what did the cat accidentally change? How do I fix it?

Thanks in advance. You guys are the best.

[Elwood P Dowd]

1. Shut it down for a few minutes and then start it up again.

After start up, run Disk Utility and repair permissions. Better yet, run DiskWarrior.

[BlueIris]

2. Ran DiskUtility did the repair premissions thing. (We don't have Disk Warrior.)

No change.

It's so weird.

[moggie]

4. I wish people wouldn't say this!

"Repair permissions" seems to be a Mac user superstition. It's the equivalent of knocking on wood, or throwing salt over your shoulder. No, the real problem here is that the OP's Mac is infested by demons, and the correct solution is to sacrifice a chicken over the keyboard.

[moggie]

3. Do you have zoom turned on?

Launch preferences, select "universal access", and look in the "seeing" tab. Is zoom enabled? It will show you key combinations for turning zoom on and off, and for zooming in and out. What you've described sounds like the screen is zoomed in - and this setting persists after a reboot (which makes sense, if you think about it from the perspective of someone with poor eyesight).

If you turn off zoom, or just zoom all the way out, things should return to normal.

[BlueIris]

5. Thank you, kind Sir/Madam. It's fixed now. You have just increased your special karma bonus points

by 10,000. Congratulations.

Thanks also to the other poster who tried; s/he made a valiant effort, too.