Strange Dock Behavior after 10.6.8 Update

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Strange Dock Behavior after 10.6.8 Update

I have noticed numerous unneeded Dock Restarts during the use of my MBPro circa 2007. Also, the Dock is consuming 99% CPU in the Activity Monitor. This behavior started after the update, and after running normally for a couple of hours. I have Restarted the MBPro and the problem still is there. Next step is to do a complete Shutdown.

Has anyone else observed this? And are there any suggestions or fixes? I hate to have my MBPro fans running full steam!

MB Pro Nov 2007, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Jun 24, 2011 9:58 AM

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Answer 1

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macjack

Level 10

111,228 points

Jun 24, 2011 10:07 AM in response to RANDY HOCH

Go to /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and delete these 2 files com.apple.dock.plist

and com.apple.dock.db.plist

Then restart. This will give you the default Dock, so you'll have to reset yours the way you like it.

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Answer 2

Jun 24, 2011 10:25 AM in response to macjack

Users of Parallels Desktop are also experiencing this high CPU load from the dock. Even when a VM machine is not running. See Parallels Forum regarding disabling the VM application folder in the dock.

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Answer 3

RANDY HOCH Author

Level 1

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Jun 24, 2011 10:56 AM in response to gregmiller

Yes, Parallels does seem to be the culprit. My heartburn didn't start until I lit off Parallels and was trying to do some work. The Dock kept restarting randomly and my Wallpaper cycle of 5 minutes would go to 1 second! Really strange behavior!

I followed Macjack's suggestion and when rebuilding my Dock, I just left the Windows Application icon (put there by Parallels) off of the Dock. Didn't use it anyway. so why have it there.

So now, I can do everything I need to without a hiccup. Just get that doggone Windows Application thing off of the Dock and I'm golden!

Thanks for your help! I'm sure other folks will find this useful!

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Answer 4

NetunoRJ

Level 1

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Jun 27, 2011 2:08 PM in response to macjack

Thanks for the solution, worked 100%.

Just needed to reconfigure Dock and Expose.

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Answer 5

skibus

Level 1

5 points

Jun 29, 2011 8:08 AM in response to macjack

Parallels was causing the problems.

Macjack's suggestion about rebuilding the Dock preferences work.

Took a Grab capture of the dock to make it easy to remember what I had there before deleting the pref files.

Did not put the Parallels back on the dock.

Everything works fine now.

Surpisingly, Parallels is running with less memory and CPU% than before - even before the 10.6.8 update (not sure why this is better...).

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Answer 6

Phlasher

Level 1

16 points

Jun 30, 2011 9:30 AM in response to macjack

I simply did the "killall Dock" as suggested in another post and when Dock (automatically) restarted, it was fine. I didnt stop Parallels (running 2 VMs), but I am not sure what will happen when I start up again. I might have to do the killall thing again, but its a small hassle for a few weeks.

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Strange Dock Behavior after 10.6.8 Update