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Dock disappeared - please help

A

abiyoshiva

macrumors newbie
Original poster
hi everyone
this is my first post here and im not sure if this is the right section of the forum to post this but here's the deal 🙂

my gf has the new mac with the leopard os on it. today just out of nowhere the dock disappeared. i restarted the computer, it showed up for a short while and disappeared again for good. i checked the dock options but there is nothing about permanent hiding or anything like that.

i would really appreciate your help because if i cant get that fixed she's not gonna stop crying about it and im gonna get huge headache 🙁. thanks
 
This should help. Make sure that Hiding is turned off.
 

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the problem is that it's off. it has always been off and the dock has always been up until this today
 
See if "Dock" is running in the terminal by entering the command "ps -aux". I suppose it's possible it's crashing.

You can try restarting it by entering the command "killall Dock"
 
ab2650 said:
See if "Dock" is running in the terminal by entering the command "ps -aux". I suppose it's possible it's crashing.

You can try restarting it by entering the command "killall Dock"
Click to expand...

under what name will the dock appear in the listing if its there??
 
I suppose your Dock.app could be corrupt. Maybe someone could send you a copy of their Dock.app and see if that fixes the problem.
 
abiyoshiva said:
no matching processes were found
Click to expand...

You may have to expand your terminal horizontally to see it all. Mine appears as:

MacBookPro:~ abennett$ ps -aux | grep Dock
abennett 950 0.0 -0.3 244928 5976 ?? S 8:22PM 0:00.31 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock -psn_0_14155777


You could also do "ps cx | grep Dock" to get a shortened version of the executable name.
 
and you already tried "killall Dock"?

i'm leaning that you may need to repair from the install discs.. 🙁

Edit: Also, what happens if you run "open /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app" ?
 
Restart. See your dock appear. Watch it disappear. Do nothing else in the meantime.

Then check the Console and look for an error message. If you ran a killall Dock and got no matching processes, then the process must have died for some reason. Chances are the Console will tell you an error message that will help the nerds and/or be found via Google.
 
To fix your dock

Leopard has a bug. I had this prob, and figured out what to do. First I deleted my dock db and plist prefs in my user library. That solved it momentarily. But the problem persisted. Apparently, deleting any jpegs in your downloads folder will bring your dock back. It's like magic!
-Ex
 
exodus said:
Leopard has a bug. I had this prob, and figured out what to do. First I deleted my dock db and plist prefs in my user library. That solved it momentarily. But the problem persisted. Apparently, deleting any jpegs in your downloads folder will bring your dock back. It's like magic!
-Ex
Click to expand...

I'm having this problem now plus an added problem.

I was just starting to watch a movie I rented in iTunes. Pause it for a minute and then actually stopped it. Exited out of Front Row to see an email that juat arrived and, well no dock. I tried going back to watch my movie and it just shows a white screen and I can hear the sound. This is the second time the dock has disappeared on me in Leopard.
 
I had the same problem too!!! My dock has disappeared twice now -- and both times right after I paused the DVD player and didn't come back to the computer for a while. The interesting thing is that although there was no dock to be seen, I still heard my Mail ring when I got new mail.
 
Same problem

My dock seemingly disappeared as well, when I left DVD Player in pause. I quit DVD player and, lo and behold! It's back!

Bug!
 
bones6505 said:
Try sudo killall Dock (note the capital 'D', it makes a difference (on my machine, at least)).
Click to expand...

You're correct that the capital matters, though I don't think you need the sudo because Dock runs as the current user, not as root (I haven't needed it ever, at least).

But running killall Dock (with the capital D) was also suggested earlier in the thread without apparent success (though it usually works for me).
 
I've had my dock disappear numerous times on both my iMac and iBook. Every time it's happened, I've just used the "killall Dock" command and that has fixed it. No big deal, in my case. Just a small Leopard bug, I'm assuming.
 
QuarterSwede said:
I suppose your Dock.app could be corrupt. Maybe someone could send you a copy of their Dock.app and see if that fixes the problem.
Click to expand...


Hey, this has happened to me and I need to find someone to send me that file. Do you know anyone who could send it me. It would be a great help because I love my Mac and I cant bare not having it the way it is meant to be🙁 Thanks
 
Dock prob? dump the ".plist" file and reboot

go to: user(you)/library/preferences folder.
Look for file called: com.apple.dock.plist
There may also be: com.apple.dock.db

Trash these two files, and reboot the machine.

New plist files are created on reboot, and the dock resets to factory mode.

Presto
 
stavman said:
go to: user(you)/library/preferences folder.
Look for file called: com.apple.dock.plist
There may also be: com.apple.dock.db

Trash these two files, and reboot the machine.

New plist files are created on reboot, and the dock resets to factory mode.

Presto
Click to expand...

This thread is nearly two years old. I'm sure everyone posting here have fixed their problems by now. 😀
 
hexonxonx said:
This thread is nearly two years old. I'm sure everyone posting here have fixed their problems by now. 😀
Click to expand...

Not necessarily...my dock disappeared last night and this user is locking up after a bit. If I set up a new admin, things work fine: no lock up and dock shows up and stays.

FYI - I did what was posted earlier today and it works. Thanks for the tip!
 
Last edited:
I started having the dock disappear 2-3 weeks ago. I first noticed it bouncing in and out and then finally out as I was installing an update to Presence, and now it frequently happens as I boot up. It mostly happens on one of my Macs, but it occasionally happens on the other. Both are running the latest version of Snow Leopard. Rebooting sometimes fixes the problem, sometimes not. But I have recently discovered that if I boot up and there is no dock, I can launch an app from the Finder and then wait several seconds and the dock will appear. In any case, since this started as I was updating Presence, and it is on both of my Macs, I was wondering if that matches with anyone else's experience.
 
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