Horrors of the Dock

Fred Flinstone

Fred Flinstone

XP Divorcee - Mac Virgin
As a complete Mac newbie I have to say that overall I love it 1000 times (and then some) more that Billy's best - what a heap! However I am starting to have a love/hate relationship with the dock already.

I choose to hide the dock to maximize my screen real estate when I am working but lately whenever I need it and drag the mouse down to the bottom of the screen nothing happens. Lost and gone forever! This behaviour only started since the last 'update' last weekend and now means if I need quick program access I have to permanently display the dock! Not what I want at all!

Anybody else had the same horrors???

Thanks
 
Are you sure that the dock isn't set to the right or left side of the screen? Do you see the dock with hiding off - apple-option-8? If all else fails, you may want to reset the dock by deleting it's preference file in /Users/<you>/Library/Preferences
 
Hi Eric and thanks for the lightning reply.

Nope - The dock was most definitely set to bottom - with hiding off it's fine (When I have this problem this is all I can do I'm afraid).

Apple - opt - 8 seems to have absolulety no effect on my machine - an Intel Duo 2 (I checked out this shortcut in system help and it refers to 'zoom' but it seemsto have zero functionality in terms of the desktop!)

I'm kinda reluctant to reset the prefs file as it took me a while to set things up just so.... I already tried repairing disk permissions and restarting......

It's back for the time being with hiding on but for god only knows how long!

- If it glitches again in the next week or so I'll report back here after cleaning out the prefs..... (as I'm gonna be away for a few days!)
 
The shortcut might vary from country to country or language to language. On my machine it's command-option-D. In any case, you should be able to see by going to the Apple menu's "Dock" sub-menu.

The 'zoom' feature you mention simply enabled/disabled the ability to zoom. When enabled, you can move in and out using command-option-= and command-option-dash (-). (And least, that's the default on my system; again, it might vary.)

As for the problem at hand, though, I really don't know. Has this problem persisted through reboots?
 
Nope - I'm afraid to say it's "gone to lunch" once again.

Now magnification isn't working either. I guess I am stuck with a Plain unhidable non animating dock - Lovely!!!

Furthermore all the icons on my desktop simply vanished earlier on. I had to hard restart ( a couple of times).

I ran virus scans / reset disk permissions etc. etc. - No clue as to what can be going on. I was only browsing the web and not working with anything too intensive!
 
Do you have anything non-standard in the way of a mouse, for instance are you using a graphics tablet?

Does it happen regardless of what program you are in?
 
I have a graphics tablet - but not one that works on a Mac!!! It does happen regardless of what program and It happens woith the standard Mac 'Super' Mouse. When things get really bad I plug in the MS Optical 5 Button and can work marginally better!!!
 
Please don't run "virus scan". There aren't any OSX virii so scanning is likely to do more harm than good.

I set my dock to the right and make it very small. It's fairly unobtrusive there and seldom gets in the way.
 
Thanks for the tip- I have ClamXav loaded but rarely use it. I rely more on Tiger Cache cleaner to clean up some stuff and Disk Utility to repair disk permissions.

Does running a virus scan actually harm the system, then?

I rarely do it as I have not got the patience for it on a Mac - seems like it'd take days to complete! ;)
 
No, running a virus scan won't harm your system. But it's got nothing to do with your actual problem, so it won't do any good either. You only have to delete the *Dock*'s preferences, not all your preferences, in order to reset the Dock's behaviour.

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist <- Delete this file.
 
A simple scan shouldn't do any harm, but any kind of dynamic anti-virus software (the kind that runs in the backround 24/7) could and, according to many user reports, often will.
 
You should check to see if your screen is not resized in such a way that the bottom of the screen is further down from the visible area, which is as far down as the mouse pointer can go. If that is the case, then the dock will never come up from auto-hide when you move the pointer down.
 
again thanks for the feedback one and all. No the problem Salival is that it locks up altogether - sometimes even in the visible state. Magnification, everything just freezes totally. This has been happening intermittently!

ANd point taken aboutthe virus scan problem - I'm gonna thrash clamXav but what to do if they do hit us with a virus????
 
Ah, you may want to try to turn off magnification and icon animation, to see if that solves the problem. What is your setup?
 
yes but - now I have to reset once again all my dock aliases..... and this willhappen again inabout a week. I tried this same excercise previously after you suggested it!

The file is called com.apple.dockfixup.plist
 
Give my application "Mac HelpMate" a try, it allows you to put the Dock at the top right of the screen, perfect place for it in my opinion.
 
"dockfixup.plist"? I haven't seen that one on any system yet. The Dock's preferences *are* saved in "com.apple.dock.plist". Where does that "fixup" file come from? Did you use any third party utility to configure your Dock?
 
sorry I was looking in the root/Library/Prefs/folder/

I have since eliminated the other one too you mentioned and seemingly for now my aliases are still all in place. Not sure what'll happen when I restart though!

- and 'No' to the 3rd party question!
 
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