RobbieSnr wrote:
Well I thought I had this sorted. I'd reinstalled Monterey, uninstalled most of my 3rd party apps, stopped the other of these apps from loading and opened up in Safe Mode.
The Dock appeared at the bottom of the screen but I couldn't hide it - perhaps that was intentional. When I opened up in normal mode it wasn't there. I saw I still had four startup items set in Users & Group Preferences so I removed these to see if it would make any difference but it didn't. However when I tried opening up again in Safe Mode the Dock had disappeared!
Is there a possibility that my Mac has been affected by a virus? I did have an incident several months ago, before the Monterey upgrade, when I could have picked up one although a virus scan at the time didn't show anything.
Virus scan... this sounds like an issue right there.
Uninstall any and all third party Antivirus, Cleaners, Optimizers, VPN, speeder uppers....
all known to cause issues on the macOS
Virus no.
This is highly unique situation...
It begs the question—was this a virgin install of MacOS testing before you moved your User files back in...?
Third party interferences sound more likely.
You can get a good look at your System config. and reveal conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com
If you need help interpreting the report you can post it here in its entirety in the "Additional Text" box in the editing toolbar below, in your reply.