Wierd desktop and dock issues....

I

ian27

It all started at 3......
Hello guys,

Hmm, this has been really strange. I have been having a few problems with OS 10.3.5. Basically everytime I restart the computer some of the items in my dock change to question marks. It's the ones that open up a disk image when I try to start of the application (ie applications such as Firefox, CocoaMySQL, TinkerTools etc). I remember this began occuring only a couple of weeks ago.

I have also noticed that from time to time all of the icons disappear from my desktop. If I then close all of the currently open applications it comes back again after a few seconds. It's all very strange. And the performance has definitely been a lot slower.

I don't really know what has caused this to happen, the only thing I can think of is that we have had some bad weather recently and the electricity got cut off a few times and so my computer was also unexpectedly cut off and I had to reboot. I can't help thinking that since this happened something weird seems to be going on.

Has anybody ever had a similar problem to this? Any advice or help as to how I should rectify this? I'm considering reinstalling the whole operating system but I'd rather avoid doing that if possible.

Thank you.

Ian
 
Firstly, have you installed the applications into your application folder? Or are you perhaps running them from the disc image file? If you have dragged them into the dock from the disk image file, then the dock won't be able to find the app or its icon until the image is mounted (hence the ? marks).
Mount the DMG for each of these applications, and drag the App icon into your applications folder.Then, drag the icons out of the dock, and drag the apps from the Applications folder onto the Dock.

If you're still having trouble, go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and run "Repair Permissions" on the drive. That often helps.
 
Doh! I think that might well be the answer. Thanks symphonix!

Do you have any idea what might be causing the disappearing desktop?
 
Try making a new user account, and log in under that new user -- surf the net, check email, etc... do your daily stuff and see if similar symptoms occur. If not, we can pretty much say that some preference or something specific to your user account is causing the troubles.
 
It's spyware! :D

No seriously, I've had icons turn into question marks as well. It usually happens when I have an icon in the Dock for an application that's either been moved from the default location, or located on an unmounted external drive. Are any of the icons for programs like Safari or iChat that aren't in their original locations?
 
Hi guys, well I managed to get rid of the question marks by dragging the application icon into the applications folder from the disk image as symphonix suggested. I'll try opening a new user account to see if I can diagnose the other problems - that's good advice, thanks. These problems only occurs from time to time but the performance is still a lot slower than it should be.

Arden, you mentioned spyware - how can I check if spyware has been installed on my machine?

Thanks again for the advice.

Ian
 
You turn around 3 times, cover your computer with magic fairy dust and chant "Spyware, begone!" :D

Don't worry about spyware, that was just a joke. There is no spyware for Mac (that I know of, at least). ;)
 
Well I tried the fairy dance but that didn't work. haha.

I have 8.65gb available on my system drive. I would have thought that should be okay. I also have 512 mb ram and I plan on doubling that soon.

I wondered if it could just be an application hogging the processor but even when I've closed down all applications it still seems to run slowly sometimes. I do have IBM ViaVoice running in the background most of the time. I'm disabled so need to use voice recognition. Could this be the culprit?

Thanks again for all your help. Where would I be without you all.

Ian
 
That's most likely your perpetrator. Try disabling it for a little while and see if the problems go away. If so, you may want to contact IBM and gripe to them about optimizing ViaVoice.
 
Thanks for the speedy response Arden. Hmm, I've just had the problem occur again now with the disappearing desktop happening again. I think the problem might actually be FireFox (I've only installed it recently so it is certainly a potential suspect). I couldn't get the desktop to reappear until I closed all applications then it re-emerged. I have the Firefox icon in the dock which links to the application in the applications folder. However, on two occasions since doing this the Firefox disc image has emerged again when I've clicked on the icon in the dock which shouldn't really happen if it links to the application in the applications folder. I hope this is making any sense. hehe. This shouldn't happen should it? I've also linked all of the other dock items to their correct applications in the applications folder and none of them occasionally created a disc image on my desktop.

What do you think?

Ian
 
Did you drag the FireFox.DMG file to the applications folder, or did you double-click the DMG file, then drag the FireFox application out of the mounted image into the applications folder? Quick and wasy way to tell: what does the icon look like of the FireFox application in the applications folder?
 
That shouldn't happen.

Do you get a dialogue of any sort when you click the Dock icon?
Like "Attaching image", etc.

Drag the dock icon off the dock, thus deleting it, and then drag the Firefox App from the Apps folder onto the dock. That should fix it.

I apologise for the problems you are having.
 
ElDiabloConCaca, I double clicked the DMG file, then dragged the FireFox application out of the mounted image into the applications folder. I've attached a gif file of the Firefox icon in my dock.

I've tried deleting it from the dock and then dragging the Firefox application from the applications folder onto the dock twice. It doesn't create the disc image each time I click on it in the dock, just now and again which is more confusing. I would have thought it either would have done it every time or not at all. I wonder if when I have downloaded Firefox it has become a bit corrupted?

Thank you.
 

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