Help needed with odd behavior

I tuned on my g5 Imac (note -this is wrong; it's a 24" iMac) running snow leopard 10.6.4 this morning and when I double clicked on the Safari icon in the dock, the only thing that happened was that a finder window opened with Safari highlighted. Clicking on that icon only resulted in another finder window opening. This situation repeated itself with any icon that I clicked on.

Right clicking on the dock icon resulted in the popup box coming up, including a choice to open the program. However, when I attempt to click on the "open", the highlight starts fluttering around, making it hard to launch. If I catch it right, it will launch.

Attempting to reboot it results in the same fluttering highlighted menu options. I have rebooted it, unplugged for 20 min, nothing has changed.

Any thoughts?

I can't help you with your problem, but I can tell you that you are not running OS X 10.6.4 on a g5. The g5 is a powerPC processor, and 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard) will only run on an Intel processor.

Oh yeah, messed that up-it's an aluminum bodied 24" with an intel chip. I gave my old g5 to my mom when I got this one...

Anyway, any ideas on what could cause this?

Just a layman's shot in the dark, but it sounds like a System User Interface problem to me. There's a plist for that: com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

If you can get to your Home folder, go into Library\Preferences and find that file.
Drag it to the Desktop, then Restart.

It might not be the problem, but doing that won't hurt anything.

lannym said:

I tuned on my g5 Imac (note -this is wrong; it's a 24" iMac) running snow leopard 10.6.4 this morning and when I double clicked on the Safari icon in the dock, the only thing that happened was that a finder window opened with Safari highlighted. Clicking on that icon only resulted in another finder window opening. This situation repeated itself with any icon that I clicked on.

Click to expand...

Two thoughts:

- first...you shouldn't have to double-click on the icons in the dock...it should only take one click.
- second...have you tried going into the "Applications" folder and double-clicking on Safari to launch it from there?

If Safari launches ok from the Applications folder...maybe the "connection" between the short cut in the dock & the Safari application in the Applications folder has gotten messed up. If this is the case...trash the Safari icon in the dock..and then create a new Safari dock short cut.

HTH,

- Nick