Q: Dock and Other Settings Randomly Breaking
Normally when I click on, say, the Downloads folder, it would pop the files out in grid view, and I could move them to where I wanted without completely opening the folder. About two months ago that function stopped working properly. I can also not click and drag Dock icons around on the dock. If I try to click and drag a folder or app from one side of the dock to the other, nothing moves.
I have also recently noticed that my Right Click Services are not proper, either. For instance, I made an add to iTunes service years ago that was working up until a couple weeks ago (probably started with the Dock issue, but I haven't added anything to iTunes in a long time). When I right click any kind of media file, I don't have the "Add to iTunes" service anymore. Same goes for the built in Service of setting a desktop background. The setting is entirely gone. I can change the background from the settings app, but that's kind of aggravating.
One last thing, this is where it all gets super weird. If I log out of my user account (I'm also the only user on this Mac) and log back in, everything works for about 10 minutes. I haven't actually timed it yet. But after things stop working, they won't work again until I log out or shut down and restart. This leads me to believe that something is loading (possibly a hijacker of some sort?) and causing the Dock and other built in Services and settings to break. I ran ClamXAV and it didn't find anything other than phishing emails in my junk folder (that I promptly removed). I tried running an Avira scan, but that program was junk. I removed it and am running a Sophos scan now.
I'm a computer repair guy (that's my actual job) but I'm literally lost on this. If anyone has any suggestions as to what is going on, that would be great.
Thanks!
BT
MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 12gb RAM
Posted on Feb 4, 2015 12:13 PM