Dock/Expose freezing

N

nicodemus

Registered
Problem:

Dock, expose, cmd-tab switching freeze. It's like the processor is getting killed (very slow performance), except it's not.

  • cannot logout or shut down - must do manually (holding power button)
  • problem occurs randomly, even with no programs running. Normally within an hour or two it happens and I have to force powerdown to restart.
  • Activity Monitor shows nothing amiss, no high processor usage or anything.

Situation:
  • PowerPC iMac G5, OSX (no previous OS). Just updated the OS and iTunes after a year away, and installed NeoOffice. Though since the problem occurs whatever I'm running I don't think that is it.
  • only things I can think of that might be culprits are the recent MacOS update, iTunes update, or this weird message I got one day when connecting Airport to a new internet connection - it asked me to confirm change of SystemUI user or something like that.

Solutions:
  • verified disk permissions.
  • trying to quit the dock process does not help, and the process just restarts instantly (but without the dock).
  • created new user, and there is no problem. So maybe something to do with user profile.
  • ran Onyx and Cocktail, removed caches and cleared stuff up. No help.
  • removed the dock plist file. No help.

This is driving me nuts.


Sorry, I'm a pro at dealing with windows problems (you kind of have to be just to use it), but relatively new to Mac weirdness. Any help greatly appreciated.
 
Try trashing the 'com.apple.systemuiserver.plist' file located in User/Library/Preferences and restart.
 
thanks for the recommendation.

I've stopped the changing desktop for now to see if it's the culprit. If it doesn't work I'll see what deleting that plist does.

Will report back in a day or two.
 
Hi again. I haven't bothered with that systemUI prefs file.

It's been a full day with no problems so far. I'm SO GLAD I found it.

But I still don't understand. All I did was set my desktop to change every 15 minutes, and that seems to have been the problem. In all my searches, there were only 1 or 2 threads out there that touched on this as a solution.

Is this a known bug or something? I would still like to know why it's doing this. For now I'm happy with a nice boring green desktop.
 
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