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New MacBook Air, Dock using crazy CPU

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Original poster
Jun 8, 2009
150
11
Kentucky, USA
Hi, I just got the new MacBook Air today. I have only been surfing, yet my computer is getting hot, and the fan is on. I checked the activity monitor, and it says that the dock is using 90%+ of my CPU
I don't know what's wrong! Can someone help?
Also, my battery (I have a 13 inch, rated at 7 hours) says it has about 3 hours left after unplugging after a full charge.
Another problem: Safari opens some websites without a problem, but often takes a really long time to open others. MacRumors was one of the ones that took forever, along with Facebook but Tumblr, for example, loaded at normal speed.

I really am worried. My problems are ordered from worst to least bad, so if anyone can help at all, that would be great! Thank you!!
Also, if you need any more information, I can give it to you!
 
Considering you have several problems, backup + Fresh install would be my advice... Sometimes it takes more time to troubleshoot than to reinstall.

If you keep having problems after that, call Applecare
 
juanm said:
Considering you have several problems, backup + Fresh install would be my advice... Sometimes it takes more time to troubleshoot than to reinstall.

If you keep having problems after that, call Applecare
Click to expand...

Can you fresh install the new MBAs? I thought they had a special version of Lion?
 
Spotlight and Dock are not related

I've been experiencing the same odd behavior.

As far as I'm aware, spotlight indexing is performed by the mds process and has nothing to do with the Dock. In addition, any indexing would be noticeable by the user since the spotlight search icon in the menu bar displays a unique graphic (pulsating dot inside the lens).

After recognizing the 90%+ CPU utilization of the dock process, and letting it run for hours without settling down, I decided to just quit the process. Upon its immediate relaunch, the CPU utilization remained low (0.xx%).

I'm sure there may be an explanation for what the Dock process is doing in the background, but until that is made clear I will be quitting the process as soon as I boot/log in on the Mid-2012 MacBook Air and allowing it to auto-relaunch so that CPU cycles can be freed up for other tasks.
 
Likewise, similar problem last night on my 13 MBP. Dock process using around 100% CPU. I was sat watching a movie in VLC and I could hear the fans ramping up - though it was strange. Killed the process and the problem went away :confused:
 
Here is a quoted solution from a previous thread, the wonders of search :D

NitrousFlare said:
Hey Everyone,

TL;DR: Genius went through preference files and found the corrupt one -- works fine now

Background: I had a mid-2011 MBP with lion, and transferred to my mid-2012 11" mba. I soon discovered that the "dock" process was using up >85% of my cpu, and causing all sorts of related problems (fan speeds, temp, battery life).

Solution:
Went to the genius bar and this is what he did:

Replaced the mba (since I bought it yesterday), and transferred all my data to the new computer. Result: same problem

Created a new user on the mba. Result: problem solved

So he renamed my existing library folder ("\Users\*username*\Library\) to
"library old". Then, from the new user's account (he logged in as "root" user) and copied/pasted the clean "library" folder into into my original user's library (replacing the existing one).*

*here he did some terminal stuff to show hidden folders b/c the user's library is hidden

Then he copied, folder by folder (then file by file when we isolated the problem to be in the preferences folder), my files from "library old" into "library," after each folder, logging out (cmd+shift+q), relogging into my user account, and running activity manager to see if the "dock" application was still acting up.

After ~1.5hours, we identified "com.apple.desktop.plist" and "com.apple.desktop.plist.lockfile" as the corrupt files and deleted them.
Result: problem solved.


Hope this helps!
Click to expand...
 
Deleting and "rebuilding" the dock and desktop preference files did not have an effect on my machine. :(
 
Solution Found! - Use desktop pictures stored on boot volume!

So... it turns out that the correlation between the deletion of the com.apple.desktop.plist files and the stabilization of the Dock process is, at least in my case, centered around the use of a desktop picture that's stored on an external drive (in an iPhoto Library).

Without having to delete any preference files, I was able to alleviate the problem by changing my desktop picture to one of the stock images stored on the boot volume, and logging out and then back in.

Apparently, reverting to a stock image is also a side effect of deleting the desktop plist file!

This was never an issue on my Mid-2010 iMac w/ the exact same peripheral configuration.
 
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