Expose hot corners can crash the dock!

[ddc]

I've found that using expose via "hot corners" can cause my dock to crash and expose to stick. I can make this happen pretty easily by just popping in and out of the corner fairly rapidly, but in regular use it happens about daily.

Dock is hidden, and apple-tab doesn't work, but I can (slowly) shut down apps using Activity Monitor. Shut down does not work. Only way to recover is to force a shutdown.

I use the dock with auto hiding, and I haven't tried this with hiding off and expose hot corners on, but I will. When crashed, activity monitor shows Dock as up to 90 percent CPU. Can force quit the dock, but it comes right back and remains stuck. No way to shut down expose that I know of.

Anyone else seen this? Any comments? I'm not used to a Mac having this sort of problem! Panther definitely worth it but I would sure like to use the corners with expose.

[SilentPanda]

May I ask *why* you feel the need to rapidly move your mouse in and out of a corner all the time?

[jayb2000]

Originally posted by ddc
... No way to shut down expose that I know of.


If you go to System Preferences/Expose, you can change the hot corners or turn them off.

Maybe try changing the corners that activate it.

[ddc]

Turning off the hot corners definitely stopped the problem, but I would like to be able to use them, since they are handy.

I tried using only the corners opposite to the dock, but got the same result.

Why was I turning expose on and off rapidly? Just troubleshooting/verifying with no other apps open. This after I had already been nailed by the problem while working normally with several apps open. So partly this was to verify that one of my applications wasn't contributing to the problem.

[VladDracul]

I just tried what you described on my powerbook and everything worked fine. What hardware are you using?

[ddc]

15" Ti Powerbook g4, 1ghz, 1gb. Problem not super reliable on my machine either.

[zellin]

all fine for me. 12" PB

[Drinahn]

Hey! Glad someone else has this problem. I've got exactly the same thing happening on my 17" AluBook rev2 running Panther.

I hadn't tied it to Hot Corners yet, but yes, it happens often to me through normal usage. I think I'll turn my hot corners off and see if it happens if I stick to using my expose mouse button on my MX900.

This is a seriously irritating problem. I found a few other issues with expose also, regarding using expose when you hold the mouse button dragging a window. ;-) Dont' ask why I did that one. :-P

[ddc]

to Drinahn:
Well, misery loves company, I guess.

I have used expose via the default function keys sparingly over the last week, and haven't had a single expose/dock crash.

[Drinahn]

Hmm, just thought as my little colour wheel is spinning frantically when I put the mouse above the dock, and my expose has gone entirely, thought I'd report that it is not tied explicitly to hot corners.

I've had the problem far less frequenly since turning hot corners off though.

I suppose I could just use the keyboard keys rather than the mouse mapped thingos... I'll see if that makes a difference.

[mms]

I've been using expose with hot corners ever since Panther came out and I've never had a problem.

[ddc]

A possibly complicating detail is that I have been using as my desktop background a folder of family jpegs, changing every 5 seconds.

Every time I experienced the dosk crash, I noticed that the desktop picture was stuck in mid-transition. I'd heard elsewhere of some conflict with using that desktop style along with the similar "changing picture" screen saver, so I'd not used that as a screen saver. I just thought tonight, though, that maybe the changing background picture is involved in this dock-expose problem.

Well, I switched to a static jpeg as the background picture and right away tried to "crash" the dock by doing the rapid cursor wiggle in and out of the hot corners. I couldn't get the crash to happen.

I switched back to the 5 sec image swapping background and got it to crash again without much effort. Again the desktop picture was stuck in mid-transition.

I don't know whether or not this problem only pops up during the transitions (I suspect it does), but I'll try using the hot corners for awhile, using just the static desktop picture.

[ddc]

Still working fine, so I guess I'll not use the "slideshow" style background.

[Diatribe]

Did you mail that problem to Apple?

[ddc]

I'll send a bug report to ADC.

[ddc]

I filled out the bug report with ADC in March. They asked me to do a couple of things for them, send them a file, etc.
I'm at OS 10.3.6 now (here it is December already!) and it appears that Apple has fixed this problem. I just tried using the changing photos desktop again and this time no crashes. YAY!