Dock Problems

[SLCentral]

Hey guys,

I'm desperate for help here. For the past two days or so, my Dock has been freezing up, and giving me the beachball if I moved my mouse over it, as well as making the enitre system so slow, to the point where it is almost unusable. Expose also stops working. Force quitting everything and relaunching the Finder doesn't help the situation either. The only icons I have on my dock are the Finder, Safari, Adium, Pages, and Maya.

Here's where it gets really weird. Today, I decided to do a clean install of OS X, and I formatted it, and reinstalled it. Yet, the problem is still happening! It doesn't make sense. It tends to happen while Safari and Adium are open, but that isn't saying much becuase those programs are open 24/7 on my system.

So, today it happened (actually, about 15 minutes ago), so I decided to check out the Activity Monitor. Since the dock wasn't working, I opened it through finder, and the dock icon did not appear on the dock. The program opened anyways, though. The Dock was using between 60% and 90% of my CPU, but a normal amount of RAM. Quitting or Force Quitting the dock would remove it from the list for a second, but then it would come back, with the same amount of CPU usage.

I'm completely lost. It's not just 10.3.8 because on my newly formatted system, it hasn't finished downloading yet (it's still downloading other Updates). Once the dock starts acting up, about 30 minutes to an hour into the session, the computer is helpless. Expose stops working, and the computer becomes dead slow. The dock is not functional either, and sometimes disappers entirely, and I have to use the Applications folder in the Finder to switch between programs. Alt + Tab doesn't work either.

Let me clarify a few things. No new RAM has been installed recently, although when I got the system back in September (It's a 1.6GHz iMac G5), l added 512MB on the same day. Only programs installed after the format are:

GMail Status (tried closing, with no help)
WeatherPop (tried closing, with no help)
Maya 6.5
iWork
iLife '04
Adobe Photoshop CS
Adium
VLC
Limwire Pro
ByteController

I'm completely stumped as to what could be going on. I'm sorry for the long post, but I didn't want to miss anything.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[rasp]

Since you went the clean install route, my guess would either be bad ram or a bad HD. I had an iMac that had all sorts of weird lock ups and other odd problems. Traced it down to the HD, replaced it, been fine since.

It's probably not a loose connection, but worth a shot, make sure everthing inside is connected fully, reseat the ram and such.

 

[SLCentral]

Since you went the clean install route, my guess would either be bad ram or a bad HD. I had an iMac that had all sorts of weird lock ups and other odd problems. Traced it down to the HD, replaced it, been fine since.

It's probably not a loose connection, but worth a shot, make sure everthing inside is connected fully, reseat the ram and such.

Would doing the Apple Hardware Test help determine problems? I know for a fact that everything is seated properly, as the system has not moved for over two weeks. Stuff doesn't just move on its own (or at least, I hope ). But, does the Apple Hardware Test also check non-Apple RAM?

 

[rasp]

Would doing the Apple Hardware Test help determine problems? I know for a fact that everything is seated properly, as the system has not moved for over two weeks. Stuff doesn't just move on its own (or at least, I hope ). But, does the Apple Hardware Test also check non-Apple RAM?

The Apple Hardware Test will most certainly check non-Apple ram. There really is little difference, other than buying from Apple you have their Best Assurance that it will work with the system. If you have other memory to test, or more than one module, you could try one at a time and see of the problem persists.

As for stuff not moving on it's own, well, these are mechanical connections in an environment that goes from hot to cold. There is expansion and contraction as the state changes. Not all items change state at the same rate, so these connections can loosen up over time. Usually years though...

 

[SLCentral]

Bah, I just finished the extended hardware test, and after around 40 minutes, it finished with no errors. I'm back in OS X now, but I'm using my lappy for the time being, I'm gonna let it finish updating everything.

Also, I checked inside, and everything looks secure.