i killed my dock

Shifting

Shifting

re-align
i was messing with TransparentDock, and i decided to set my dock back to it's default looks, by using a backup of the default dock. the trouble is, the backup is from the jaguar days (i'm running panther now) which i didn't realize until it was too late. so now, the dock is gone. every once in awhile it pops up and disappears just as quick, which i assume is it trying to start and force quitting. a restart did nothing...anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

now the finder is acting strangely, too. i have to quit all visible running apps to focus on it, unless i leave a finder window open. i can't use expose, i can't minimize, can't see what apps are running...

could a fix be as simple as using pacifist to extract the dock.app off my panther install disc and dropping that in library/core services, and thus replacing my current messed up dock.app? i don't to risk screwing things up worse by attempting this, thus i'm asking if this could be a fix...
 
delete: com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.finder.plist
in the /home/Library/Preferences folder. This should set everything back to default. Good luck!
 
Zammy, as a matter of fact that is the first thing i tried, it didn't do a thing after a restart.

so then i started repairing permissions, like diablo suggested. that's usually a 10 minute affair for me. well, over 20 minutes later, the permission repair is only 1/3 done, and i've seen numerous mentions of iphoto(?!) such as this stuff:

Code: 
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp21.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp21.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp21.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp23.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp23.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp23.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp23.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp24.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp24.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp24.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp24.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp28.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp28.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp28.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp28.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp29.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp29.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp29.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp29.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp30.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp30.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp30.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp30.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp31.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp31.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp31.html
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp31.html
User differs on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp32.html, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp32.html, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rw------- 
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/ko.lproj/iPhoto Help/pgs/hlp32.html

that represents about a second's worth of repaired permissions, they're going by very fast, and like i said, it's been going for over 20 minutes now. obviously something is very wrong, i just hope this works...
 
Good luck. Hopefully this will fix your problems.
Did you upgrade your Jaguar to Panther or do a clean install?
If you upgraded, did you repair permissions before the upgrade?
 
Ooooh boy. I know what it feels like to have a messed up Mac. Like someone you know is on deathrow or something :(.

Just make sure you back up, I guess
 
i can't believe it, the permission repair didn't fix it! :(

though it did take over 45 minutes, and it generated a log that is 4mb large...

diablojota said:
Good luck. Hopefully this will fix your problems.
Did you upgrade your Jaguar to Panther or do a clean install?
If you upgraded, did you repair permissions before the upgrade?
Click to expand...

i upgraded about a month ago. repaired permission before and after the upgrade. no problems whatsoever since then. everything has been smooth sailing until this.

dlloyd, that's exactly how i feel. my mac is my baby, and this is a dark day indeed. unfortunately a full back up right now would be extremely tough. i don't have the media to do it.

i'm going to try my pacifist idea, does anyone know where the dock is located on the panther install discs?
 
Probably a dumb question, but did you try adjusting the settings in the System panel for the dock? Perhaps to always on or something like this?
 
just a fun question:
did you ever just setup a new user account and see how your dock and finder behave there? You might emigrate from your current account to the new one if things work fine there and reinstalling the dock didn't help..
 
well after having no luck with my pacifist idea, i decided to go with a clean install of panther. of course, that fixed everything.

and though i lost a lot of stuff (i could only back up half my crap) i think this clean install was ultimately a good idea, as the last time i did a clean install was back in the OS X 10.0 days! so now everything is working very smoothly, even better than before.

thanks again to everyone for your help and suggestions. :)
 
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