[ZBurnett]

Hello - I've got a iMac G5 that has been really nice so far... unfortunately, one of the desktops just stopped working. When I log in I see the few files that were there (three of them) but the desktop has no Dock and the Apple menu doesn't work. Also when I try to use System Preferences it quits.
The back ground picture is still set to the same picture that it has been, but for some reason it isn't displaying. The dashboard isn't available either...
The other 3 users on this machine seem to work as usual. Any ideas?
thanks,
-Z

[ZBurnett]

Here's a couple other details... I'm running OSX 10.4.7, 2.1GHz PowerPC G5 processor, 1G RAM
It's like the machine has something else running on the desktop that is blocking it. When I click on the apple menu the it seems to blink but it doesn't bring up the menu.
Also I can't log out of this user's account, but when I do a force-quit Apple-Option-Escape, I find myself back at the user login screen.
Very strange. I've gone through a bunch of boots, looked at Activity Monitor and got rid of some recent preferences... turned off a startup item, but it still acts the same.
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
-Z

[dougster]

-Hi,

In reply to:

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It's like the machine has something else running on the desktop that is blocking it.

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Peek at the Activity Monitor for some clue as to what might be running, and if so you can select,and Quit Process of the culprit if there is something in the background: HD/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.

[ZBurnett]

It's really interesting what's NOT running rather than what is when I look at this. There's no widgets, no Dock... actually very little.
This was an account with parental controls set on it. I removed that by making it an admin account and the Apple menu came back so I can log off now, but I still have this screen or something instead of a desktop. The background was set to a picture but it isn't displaying... I changed it to one of the default ones and the screen didn't change but it won't change back.
Very strange. There are some other issues on the machine with other users, but nothing as major. Safari is freezing, and I put a DVD in a while back that I burned on a PC and this iMac immediately said, this machine needs to power off. One of my widgets insists that the incoming air temp is 93 but it can't be.
Thanks anyway,
-Z

[ZBurnett]

Booting into safe mode was an interesting trick... Hold down shift key right after the boot sound.... I'm not sure it did much but one piece of advice from an Apple discussion board was to get rid of OS 9 fonts (OSX reads OS9 fonts!?) and I did weed them out quite a bit. I also got rid of some unknown startup apps from my other desktops. Those are under Login Items from the Account icon of System Preferences.
I think what actually helped was getting rid of the dock preference for this particular user. /Library/Preferences/~.dock
I ran "Maintenance 3.5" a whole bunch of times and that speeded things up. I wonder why it took away the pictures for my limited accounts??
I guess this is back to normal... I can't help feeling like I lost the battle because I had to redo the dock from scratch. I guess in Windows I'd be redoing the whole machine!
-Z

[ZBurnett]

Yep... this happened again on two desktops at the same time... The background and the dock both disappear. The quick solution appears to be go to the user and delete the com.apple.dock.plist from the users library. Then you redo the dock.

I started watching the CPU with 2 users on... Firefox is taking gobs of CPU for the other user... Safari still freezes up on this machine... I'll keep digging on this one.
Oh yes, this is an iMac G5 with Tiger 10.4.8 and a Gig of Memory.