Got a problem NEED HELP!!!!

[evolve]

Ok, i have Tiger and in my doc there is a lingering application. Everytime i go to click quit, nothing happens. its saying "Application not responding" (when i hold down the mouse). When I click on the program icon stuck in my dock, nothing happends, but its shows up in the menu bar that its the system preferences application. (that icon is already showing in my dock to begin with as the little switch)

Please help me figure out how i can remove it from my doc, its bugging the Sh*t out of me. I tried clicking on "remove from dock"...nothing happens AND i even tired the basics, like rebooting the computer. HELP!!!!!!

 

[evolve]

Can some one help?

 

[BigBear]

i'm gonna go for the obvious but did you try dragging it out of the dock?

 

[technologist]

From the Apple menu, select Force Quit. In the dialog, select the app and kill it.

 

[evolve]

tried drging it out of the dock.....nothing. Tried force quiting it from both it own menu and Finders menu.....Nothing. (doesnt show in dialog box) Im getting so irritated.....lol

 

[evolve]

Correction on the title of the stuck application. the App IS "Dock". That makes sence on WHY i cannot force quit it. i guess my question is, Is this supposed to be a hidden file? why is is showing an application icon named "Dock", and how Can i get rid of it?

 

[supremeoverlord]

The dock is the bar at the bottom that lauches programs and also Dashboard in run inside this app as well. You can't quit it, its sort of part of the finder. But there is no reason you should need to quit it anyway. If it locks up, go to the utilities folder in the application folder and open up Activity monitor. Here you can select any process and use the quit process button and it will kill it. I hoped that helped.

 

[iWhat]

Try searching for the dock prefrence file in search, delete it. It should look something like this com.apple.dock.plist I believe (not at a mac at the moment). Then reboot.

 

[evolve]

...Ok Check this out. To clarify. I know the doc needs to stay open. However, the application icon FOR the dock is showing IN the doc. (Just like Mail does, Safari, Dashboard, itunes, etc) I cannot drag it out of the dock to get rid of the icon, nor can i force quit it. Im wondering if its supoosed to be a 'hidden' file? I never noticed it there before. do you think I might have to retore the OS using the disk that came with the imac G5? Someone help, please. Thanks.

P.S. Im a 1st time mac user, and so far the experiance is great. I just dont know my way around the mac system very well. Im hoping that some of you experianced mac users can help out. :mac:

 

[Amen-Moses]

...Ok Check this out. To clarify. I know the doc needs to stay open. However, the application icon FOR the dock is showing IN the doc. (Just like Mail does, Safari, Dashboard, itunes, etc) I cannot drag it out of the dock to get rid of the icon, nor can i force quit it. Im wondering if its supoosed to be a 'hidden' file? I never noticed it there before. do you think I might have to retore the OS using the disk that came with the imac G5? Someone help, please. Thanks.

P.S. Im a 1st time mac user, and so far the experiance is great. I just dont know my way around the mac system very well. Im hoping that some of you experianced mac users can help out. :mac:

Did you search for the plist like suggested in a previous post?

Does the icon still show up after a reboot?

Have you tried repairing permissions? (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility, highlight partition with OS X on it - there will probably only be one there named Macintosh HD so click on it - then click on the "Repair Disk Partitions") You should do this about once a month really, especially after a large amount of updates have been applied.

btw the plist is located in Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist try deleting the file and then from the apple icon do ForceQuit->Finder->Relaunch. That should put the dock back to as delivered status so if you have customised it then you will need to re-do the customisations again.

Incidentally if you install the developer tools you can edit plist files (they are XML files) in a similar way to the registry file in Windoze, sometimes looking at the plist files in the XML editor can reveal some interesting things about Applications, for example I lost an activation code for an App and found it in the plist file.

Amen-Moses

 

[Amen-Moses]

btw2 :dummy:

In unix preferences for applications and system services (and virtually everything else) are contained in small text files dotted around the machine in a variety of places. The files are usually very small and not very well identified so Apple chose instead to use XML files with long meaningful names and also to mostly put them all in the same place but as the application controls where they reside they can be anywhere. Spotlight is really really good imo as previously I would have to use find from the root to work out where they all live but now spotlight can reveal them really quickly.

The convention for applications is to look for a preferences file (plist actually means "properties list") and if it can't find one it will create a default one for you so if any application starts to misbehave badly then as almost the last resort (i.e before resorting to completely re-installing it) you can pretty safely delete the plist files and restart the app.

Remember that doing this will almost certainly lose any setting that you had made so if the app is very important to you it is a good idea to back up your plist files for that app (there can be more than one!) so you can attempt to get back to a known good setup.

Just type "plist" into spotlight to see how many you have on your system, mine comes up with 584!

Amen-Moses

 

[evolve]

Did you search for the plist like suggested in a previous post?

Does the icon still show up after a reboot?

Have you tried repairing permissions? (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility, highlight partition with OS X on it - there will probably only be one there named Macintosh HD so click on it - then click on the "Repair Disk Partitions") You should do this about once a month really, especially after a large amount of updates have been applied.

btw the plist is located in Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist try deleting the file and then from the apple icon do ForceQuit->Finder->Relaunch. That should put the dock back to as delivered status so if you have customised it then you will need to re-do the customisations again.

Incidentally if you install the developer tools you can edit plist files (they are XML files) in a similar way to the registry file in Windoze, sometimes looking at the plist files in the XML editor can reveal some interesting things about Applications, for example I lost an activation code for an App and found it in the plist file.

Amen-Moses

Ok, Im going to try deleting the plist. I don't see one like above, but i DO see one that reads: com.apple.dockfixup.plist
is that the same one i should delete?

 

[Amen-Moses]

Ok, Im going to try deleting the plist. I don't see one like above, but i DO see one that reads: com.apple.dockfixup.plist
is that the same one i should delete?

Yes delete that one, I'm surprised that you couldn't find the other one but maybe that is the problem.

Amen-Moses

 

[iWhat]

There is another .plist file that you need to delete, if you can find. Go to: User/Library/Prefrences, then delete com.apple.dock.plist .

 

[evolve]

ok peoples. Apple chat support reps SUCK!!!! they are absolutly no help. I have been waiting for like 15 minutes now for a respons.

Anyway, Im still having this problem. That Application icon named 'dock' is STILL stuck in my dock. I tried all your suggestions. drag to trash-nothing. force quit-nothing. delete the com.apple.dock.plist-nothing. any other suggestions?

 

[Amen-Moses]

ok peoples. Apple chat support reps SUCK!!!! they are absolutly no help. I have been waiting for like 15 minutes now for a respons.

Anyway, Im still having this problem. That Application icon named 'dock' is STILL stuck in my dock. I tried all your suggestions. drag to trash-nothing. force quit-nothing. delete the com.apple.dock.plist-nothing. any other suggestions?

Install the developer tools and then double click on your com.apple.dock.plist file. It should then be loaded into the property list editor and you could then try to edit out the entry.

(you may be able to just get the propert list editor from somewhere rather than install the whole set)


Amen-Moses