What happened to my Widgets?

Question

What happened to my Widgets?

I run my Mac Pro 24/7. I'm running 10.5.7 and have been doing so since it came out a few weeks ago. This morning, I came down and discovered that all the widgets I use that poll for feeds (e.g. stock widget, MacWorld, VersionTracker, etc) wouldn't update their feeds. In fact, their boxes contain nothing. I went into Activity Monitor and saw that one instance of the Dashboard client was "frozen" and not responding. I forced quit the instance and watched for any response. Nothing happened. I repaired permissions and then restarted my machine. When it rebooted, the same widgets were not working. Activity monitor showed one instance of Dashboard Client not responding. The only software installed in the past 24 hours is the Safari released version 4.0. It is installed on other machines and none of them show widget problems.

Any ideas what to check as I am running quickly out of places to turn. Some widgets work; most don't.

Mac Pro (2008) 3.0 Octo, MBP 2.4, new MBP 2.8, iMac 2.8, BlackBook, Mac OS X (10.5.7), More iPods than people, a new 32 GB Touch and 16 GB 3G iPhone

Posted on Jun 9, 2009 3:11 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

CMCSK

Level 6

11,452 points

Jun 9, 2009 3:20 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

Determine if you need to update the widgets you are having issues with. Have you tried reinstalling them? Trashing the com.apple.dashboard.plist file may resolve your issue. If you do this, you will need to reset your widget settings.

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Answer 2

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Jun 9, 2009 7:22 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

It is possible that one of your widgets ran amok and froze everything up. You might try relaunching the Dock (the Dock process also runs the Dashboard stuff). You can do this via Activity Monitor - select the Dock process and hit the Quit Process button. The Dock will automatically relaunch. If that doesn't work, try logging out/in.

charlie

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Answer 3

MAW01

Level 1

8 points

Jun 19, 2009 3:59 PM in response to Marc Feldesman

I apologize if this is not the correct area to post his. I updated to 10.5.7 and Safari 4 and have nothing but problems with the Widgets. I tried trashing the plist, kill the dock, shutting down, you name, I've tried it. I even did an archive and install. Now here is the problem that occurs. When i restart, the weather widgets do not come up in the correct location. At least one or two of them will change the city name to Cupertino. then I click out of and back into the widgets and presto the correct city names come back. Just now the stock ticker will no longer update.

I called Apple and they have been running some images off of my drive and told me they would at least have an answer by next Tuesday. The Apple op system has been rock solid stable until the last two updates. I really rely on the widgets to give me instantaneous information on a number of things, so this problem is annoying. I will no longer download updates to my system for at least 30 days and only after reading the message boards. Very disappointing that all this has occurred.

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