Dock missing at startup

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Dock missing at startup

I just installed Snow Leopard, and everything seemed fine the first few days, but when I changed the settings to automatic login, something unusual happened.

Whenever I startup, the background (regardless of the prior settings), always starts up blue, and the Dock is simply not there. After I try to fiddle with the Dock settings, these do not respond to commands. None of the visual preference commands work, until I play with the desktop background, and then when the picture manages to change, the other settings are changeable as well, and I can bring the dock back.

When I start up again, the same thing happens all over. I have 45 gigs free on this, it's not like it's cluttered. It does seem, however, that start up is a bit slower than before. What's going on?

Macbook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 1, 2009 2:42 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 1, 2009 5:35 AM in response to Perseus353

Hello P:

Welcome to Apple discussions.

Try trashing a couple of preference files and restarting:

com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.dock.plist

Barry

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Answer 2

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 1, 2009 12:23 PM in response to Barry Hemphill

Thank you for your reply.

That didn't quite help. Deleting and restarting didn't lead it to fix itself, and now I have the same problem, but system preferences doesn't work anymore.

I can't find the trash. Where is it located so I can recover the files?

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Answer 3

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 1, 2009 1:15 PM in response to Perseus353

Sorry, in the first instance I removed the wrong files, but then I removed the two files you mentioned, but this didn't solve the problem. I can bring the dock back after going after some settings for a while, but it's still not there after start up.

Also, there are some other symptoms.

* The desktop comes back blank or with the standard background after startup, regardless of how I have changed it.

* The energy icon won't appear, regardless of how many times I 'tell' it to in the preferences.

Still not quite sure what is going on.

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Answer 4

Oct 1, 2009 5:16 PM in response to Perseus353

Hi P:

Since you have done several thing, please document what you have done and what current problems exist. Changes sometimes mask other issues.

Barry

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Answer 5

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 2, 2009 1:42 AM in response to Barry Hemphill

I have installed snow leopard, and then everything was fine.

When I changed the settings to "auto-login" and also changed the name from "admin" to my name, then the problem started, which seems unrelated.

I then followed your instructions and removed the two files you mentioned, but this didn't solve the porblem. (I initially removed the wrong files, but restored these, so no damage there)

thank you,

Benjamin B.

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Answer 6

hungryjoe

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Oct 2, 2009 2:13 AM in response to Perseus353

Perhaps the system logs could contain some useful information. Maybe you could open up /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and filter for 'dock' to see if there are any error messages.

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Answer 7

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 2, 2009 5:32 AM in response to hungryjoe

Oh interesting... it does!

This sequence is repeated many times:

10/1/09 9:39:23 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[86] (com.apple.Dock.agent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 1 seconds
10/1/09 9:39:23 PM ReportCrash[1173] Saved crash report for Dock[1204] version 1.7 (751) to /Users/admin/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Dock 2009-10-01-213923Benjamins-MacBook-Air.crash
10/1/09 9:39:24 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[86] (com.apple.Dock.agent[1206]) Job appears to have crashed: Bus error
10/1/09 9:39:24 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[86] (com.apple.Dock.agent) Throttling respawn: Will start in 1 seconds
10/1/09 9:39:24 PM ReportCrash[1173] Saved crash report for Dock[1206] version 1.7 (751) to /Users/admin/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Dock 2009-10-01-213924Benjamins-MacBook-Air.crash

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Answer 8

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 2, 2009 5:36 AM in response to Perseus353

Ok, and the crash reports at /Users/admin/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Dock 2009-10-01-213924Benjamins-MacBook-Air.crash, says the following...

Is there anything useful here?

Process: Dock [1129]
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
Identifier: com.apple.dock
Version: 1.7 (751)
Build Info: Dock-7510000~1
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [84]

Date/Time: 2009-10-01 22:30:31.571 +0200
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.1 (10B504)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC BADACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: 0x000000000000000a, 0x0000000112748034
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

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Answer 9

Oct 2, 2009 6:14 AM in response to Perseus353

Hello again:

At this point, I think I would reinstall OS X 10.6 (upgrade, over your current installation).

Barry

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Answer 10

hungryjoe

Level 2

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Oct 2, 2009 1:15 PM in response to Perseus353

Okay, it is quite clear that your dock is crashing during startup and that is what is causing the problems. Seems like you have an x86_64 processor. Perhaps you could try to boot into the 64-bit mode (or the 32-bit mode if you are already booting into 64-bit mode) to see what happens. To boot into 64-bit mode just hold down the 6 and 4 keys during startup and for 32 bit mode hold down the 3 and 2 keys instead of 6 and 4.
By the way, have you upgraded the hardware of your computer as well? Maybe that could be the cause of the problem as well.

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Answer 11

Perseus353 Author

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Oct 7, 2009 7:57 AM in response to hungryjoe

Thanks hungryjoe, I tried that but it didn't solve. Interested start-up trick, though.

None of the higher lever graphical functions work either, spaces, expose etc. I will re-install it as soon as I get ahold of my copy of the family pack again.

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Answer 12

hungryjoe

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Oct 7, 2009 1:36 PM in response to Perseus353

Humff. Looks like something is corrupt somewhere. Can you give me something more perhaps from the system logs that might help investigate what's going on? If there's nothing useful then the easiest way out might be a reinstall or a restore from a Time Machine backup. 😟

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Answer 13

Perseus353 Author

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Dec 23, 2009 3:32 AM in response to hungryjoe

The problem was finally solved by backing up, wiping the hard disk and reinstalling Snow Leopard from scratch.

It seems better to install Snow Leopard on a blank disk, rather than as an surgical upgrade on top of the old Leopard.

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