Dashboard not displaying Widgets....

[SouthernAngel]

You also asked for the list of plugins. Here are all the files that Spotlight found with "plugin" in the filename:

QuickTime Plugin.plugin
ExcelPrintPDE.plugin
WordPDE.plugin
Microsoft Component Plugin
QuickTime Plugin.webplugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
PowerPointPrintPDE.plugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin
Flash Player.plugin
CheckPlugin

Here's the list of files in the ~/library/internet Plug-ins/ folder (including overlap w/ the previous list):

Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
QuickTime Plugin.webplugin
VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin

 

[mad jew]

Damn. Nothing obvious there. Match that final list (of your Home folder's internet plugins) against the working account's plugins. Are they identical?

 

[SouthernAngel]

The plug-in list in my previous post was from the "main" library file -- the one located on the hard drive. When I looked in the individual account libraries, none of them contained any plug-ins in their /library/internet Plug-ins folders. That includes both the accounts that work and those that don't work.

I think I may have an insight, though. The account in which the widgets work was one with parental controls, the others weren't. I tried enabling parental controls on the other accounts. The widgets didn't immediately work, until I explicitly allowed the accounts to run widgets. After that, the widgets worked, but I needed to explicitly allow them by enabling parental controls, clicking on the box to allow only specific applications, then allowing widgets. Unfortunately, if I then disabled parental controls, the widgets stopped working.

As one more test I made two new accounts -- one standard and one managed. In both cases once I followed the procedure above the widgets worked -- but not until. And if I removed the parental controls, the widgets stopped working.

So one answer, at least on my system, seems to be that widgets only worked when specifically enabled under parental controls. Of course, I'd rather not impose parental controls on every account, particularly on the administrator account. I haven't seen others writing about this issue, so I assume this isn't a general problem with Leopard, but maybe it is?

 

[SCStevens04]

I haven't seen others writing about this issue, so I assume this isn't a general problem with Leopard, but maybe it is?

I have the same problem and also decided it was linked to parental controls. For a while it would be that I could go logoff of my son's acct then the other acct's could use widgets but that doesn't even work now.

Maybe it only effects iMac's with kids in South Carolina? 🙄

 

[SouthernAngel]

A quick update after a lot of work. I'll skip to the end. I spent a bit over two hours on the phone with Apple Care last night working on both this project and a non-functioning firewire. One of the Apple experts emailed me the following link:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307022

It describes my problem, but unfortunately the fix doesn't seem to work for me. Still, I thought I'd post it in case it helps someone else with non-functioning widgets.

 

[Reflow]

A quick update after a lot of work. I'll skip to the end. I spent a bit over two hours on the phone with Apple Care last night working on both this project and a non-functioning firewire. One of the Apple experts emailed me the following link:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307022

It describes my problem, but unfortunately the fix doesn't seem to work for me. Still, I thought I'd post it in case it helps someone else with non-functioning widgets.

Oh my god you still haven't got this fixed yet. Have you called them back?

 

[SouthernAngel]

Last night was the first time I broke down and called Apple Care. (I've been saving up several issues to give them all at once.) I emailed back again today to say the issue hasn't been solved. I'll add another post if I learn anything potentially useful.

 

[wddeanjenna]

Here is how I fixed my widgets

The other day I turned on my mac and my widgets were gone and I couldn't re-add them. When I tried they just disappeared. The night before, my kids were on it and I figured they screwed something up. Anyway, I had just added parental controls and thought that was the problem because everyone seems to point to it. However, the answer was too simple. On the bottom, the "dashboard" icon was missing. My kids must have removed it off the dock. So, i dragged it back from the applications folder and then you have to click the "+" to add them back. You have to add all your widgets back. I know its simple but thats what happened to mine. Now, after two days of trying to figure out what went wrong, my widgets are back. Funny thing is, I didn't realize how much I used them.