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My DOC keeps disappearing....Help!

N

nd67

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 21, 2002
15
0
Help! My doc disappears every few minutes than reappears suddenly. I have no idea why this is happening. When the doc disappears from the bottom of my desktop I cannot downsize anything until it reappears. Very frustrating! I tried to find something in system preferences but couldn’t. Has anyone else out there had this happen? I’m running 10.2.4.

Thanks!
 
Do you have the dock hiding feature turned on? I tried using it once, but it seemed unreliable. There were times that I'd try to get the dock back up, and it wouldn't. Or, I'd move the cursor toward the lower right of a window to scroll down, and the dock would reappear. I turned the hiding off, and haven't had any more problems.
 
I'd repair permissions if I were you. If that doesn't work, check and see if it affects all users (if you're the only user, create a new user, test it and then you can delete the test user). If it doesn't, just move your important preferences and stuff to a new user and delete the old one. If it affects all users, a reinstall is necessary. Sounds complicated, but it's not really.

JW
 
Thanks for the suggestions.. I'll try both and keep you posted.
 
Dock preferences in System Preferences has an option for showing/hiding the dock. Try selecting this to see if the dock always stays up afterwords. Does it appear when you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen?
 

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Hi Guys,

I still can't figure this out. Here is an update:

1. Checked the box for hide/show doc in system prefs. The box has never been checked. I checked it and the doc began disappearing on a regular basis. When the box is not checked it still disappears but not on a regular basis.

2. Using the mouse I've tried to get the doc to re-appear but I can't. If I waive it over the doc nothing happens. I have to sit and wait for the doc to pop back up.

3. Regarding permissions... I'm not sure how to repair?

4. Dan... Dock related haxies - what are these?
 
Go to Applications Folder then Utilities Folder. Open the program Disk Utility. Click on your Hard drive, and then click the First Aid Tab. Then Click Repair Button.....
 
Stelliform - Thanks for the suggestion. I did this and the doc is still disappearing. The only thing I've done since installing a fresh copy of 10.2.4 is install a keyspan serial to usb cable so I can sync my palm. Other than that this computer is just as it came. Should I remove the serial cable drivers? Is there an easy way to do that? This is a real pain.

Thanks!
 
I don't believe so. The only software I've added since the machine was new is MS-Office and Netscape. I spend most of my time in Word or Netscape. I'll be working along and suddenly I hear the hard drive start then the doc disappears. Many seconds later it will re-appear.
 
I use to have this exact same problem on my TiBook, but that was with OS 10.1 so I'm not sure if it's caused by the same thing. What was happening was the dock was constantly restarting and quitting for no reason. A tech guy I know was able to determine this with the Process Viewer application or something. After trying a bunch of different things I ended up just wiping the HD and reinstalling everything. Never happened again and I'm not sure what started it.
 
Dock Crashes

Try right clicking on the desktop - selecting "change desktop background" - then selecting a default background (nature, abstract, etc)

- "If you select multiple photos, clicking Desktop sets those photos to be a screensaver slideshow
and rotates through them as your Desktop picture. There's a problem, though.
If you want a set of photos to be your screensaver, reset the Desktop picture to use
a single photo or risk having your Dock crash and relaunch itself on a periodic basis.
A future version of Mac OS X will fix the bug." - http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-665.html

That should fix the dock crash problem...
Chris
 
So you're saying if someone should find a solution to an (unsolved) problem - they should refrain from posting this information if its been more than 4 months since the thread was last active?

- I had the same problem, I searched these forums and found these threads, but no-one had an answer - I figured it out, and posted the solution. Who cares how long its been.

Chris

BUMP
back on top!
 
just a thought...

So I kept having my dock go from always showing to hiding itself without knowing what I did.

I just figured out what I was doing so maybe this will help anybody out there.

I just discovered the if you type ctrl + command + D you can have a quick popup show you the definition of a word that the mouse was hovering over. I look up words quite a bit so I love this feature. The problem is that I couldn't remember the key board shortcut. I knew it was either ctrl + command + D or option + command + D.

option + command + D toggles the hide Dock feature.

Easy to screw up if you don't pay attention. Anyway hope this helps somebody out.
 
teeheee :D

well the post before that was "just" saying how they don't understand how something could be deemed irrelevant after 4 months, and I concur.

Haha, yea for resurrecting the dead!
 
Still a helpful thread

Thanks AUcdc! (though you will probably never see this) Old or not, I needed a solution and that worked. Yeah
 
dock is disapearing

my dock is disapearing on mac mini i have to go to apple in the top left hand corner and set the dock to display left screen and then back to bottom screen and everything is fine , but why is it dissapearing in the first place its seems that the dock is unexpectantly stopping for some reason i have read the forum and nothing seems to be wrong . thanks
 
HD/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Try moving that file to your Desktop, then Restart.
This will make a new plist file, set to defaults.
If the Dock behaves, reset any preferences you had changed, and Trash the plist file you moved to the Desktop.
If not, you can put that file back, overwriting the newer one.

Next, try out a different user account. If that fixes the Dock problem, there is something corrupt in the other account you've been using.
 
Thanks for the great advice

Gregg2 said:
HD/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Try moving that file to your Desktop, then Restart.
This will make a new plist file, set to defaults.
If the Dock behaves, reset any preferences you had changed, and Trash the plist file you moved to the Desktop.
If not, you can put that file back, overwriting the newer one.
Click to expand...

I was having this same issue. My dock would disappear, and then I'd get the swirling beach ball of death, and my system would essentially freeze. At the advice of another poster here or elsewhere I looked in the activity monitor, searched for dock, and it kept appearing and reappearing, frequently and constantly, so I was unable to shut it down. I moved my plist file, as described above, and restarted, and so far have had no issues. Thanks for the great tip!

Mark
 
jwopitz said:
So I kept having my dock go from always showing to hiding itself without knowing what I did.

I just figured out what I was doing so maybe this will help anybody out there.

I just discovered the if you type ctrl + command + D you can have a quick popup show you the definition of a word that the mouse was hovering over. I look up words quite a bit so I love this feature. The problem is that I couldn't remember the key board shortcut. I knew it was either ctrl + command + D or option + command + D.

option + command + D toggles the hide Dock feature.

Easy to screw up if you don't pay attention. Anyway hope this helps somebody out.
Click to expand...

You can also just right click and choose "Look up in Dictionary"... lot easier to remember plus you can google it. It's how I get definitions when I need them. And just in case anyone doesn't know, you don't have to highlight the word either, just right click anywhere in the word.
 
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