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Yosemite: No dock and graphics issue

D

derekarmstrong

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 25, 2014
2
0
I made a backup of my Mavericks installation yesterday and took the plunge into Yosemite.

OS X 10.10 installation was a bit slow, but everything seemed to work properly until I booted into the OS for the first time (and every since).

My issues: SCREEN RECORDING SHOWING THE PROBLEMS

I have no dock.
The dock rarely appears, and when it does, there's not an opportunity for me to use it. It's appearance seems to be completely random with no cause for disappearance.
My wallpaper flashes black frequently.
Self explanatory, but my wallpaper is replaced by a black screen repeatedly. This happens on average every 1 second or less.

I think the wallpaper issue might involve graphics drivers, but I've seen other machines with my card run Yosemite without these hiccups.

Here are my specs:
MacBook (White. 13-inch, Mid-2009)
2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB
160GB, 5400RPM SATA Drive with 64GB BootCamp Partition.

Attempts at resolution:
  • My Wacom Preferences utility was marked as Incompatible during installation. I removed it during my first boot.
  • Mint QuickView and Dropbox were removed from startup

Can anyone help me get this resolved? I would be forever grateful (or until the next seed)
 
derekarmstrong said:
I made a backup of my Mavericks installation yesterday and took the plunge into Yosemite.

OS X 10.10 installation was a bit slow, but everything seemed to work properly until I booted into the OS for the first time (and every since).

My issues: SCREEN RECORDING SHOWING THE PROBLEMS

I have no dock.
The dock rarely appears, and when it does, there's not an opportunity for me to use it. It's appearance seems to be completely random with no cause for disappearance.
My wallpaper flashes black frequently.
Self explanatory, but my wallpaper is replaced by a black screen repeatedly. This happens on average every 1 second or less.

Can anyone help me get this resolved? I would be forever grateful (or until the next seed)
Click to expand...

Were you by chance using cDock at some point, possibly an older version?

I can tell you for a fact what's happening is your dock is repeatedly crashing.
 
Same Issue

I'm having the same issue. I happened to have another admin account on my computer. I logged onto it and I do not have the issue.
 
Reinstall by booting to your Recovery system partition.
Restart, holding Command-R.
You will boot to the main recovery menu, which will give you a list of various choices.
Choose Reinstall OS X.
Wait for it to complete (should be less than an hour, though it could be considerably quicker with a good internet connection, and if you would replace your spinning hard drive with an SSD - which is a good choice to speed up your MacBook in any case.)
 
Thanks for the re-install info. BTW, signing on to my guest account does not have the same problem.
 
DeltaMac. Followed your info regarding the reinstall. I completed it, but the same problem appears, a blinking background and no dock on my admin account, but the guest account is fine. Can one set up a new admin1 account and transfer the contents of admin to admin1?. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.
 
danlecl said:
DeltaMac. Followed your info regarding the reinstall. I completed it, but the same problem appears, a blinking background and no dock on my admin account, but the guest account is fine. Can one set up a new admin1 account and transfer the contents of admin to admin1?. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Do you per change have any dock altering apps you've used in the past?

Like:

  • cDock
  • Dockify
  • DockMod
  • etc...

Clearly you have a tweak or third party app crashing your dock repeatedly.
 
No 3rd party apps. I have set up admin1, and if I use a migration assistant,I think I will end up with the same problem. Thanks
 
w0lf said:
Do you per change have any dock altering apps you've used in the past?

Like:

  • cDock
  • Dockify
  • DockMod
  • etc...

Clearly you have a tweak or third party app crashing your dock repeatedly.
Click to expand...

I am having the same problem and thought the same thing about third party apps. I did have two that I hadn't used in years. I deleted them and took everything out of my log in items in System Preferences but am still having the problem. In my other admin account I do not have this problem. It takes about thirty seconds or so after logging in for it to start. Once it does start it blinks at least once per second.
 
drcorrell said:
I am having the same problem and thought the same thing about third party apps. I did have two that I hadn't used in years. I deleted them and took everything out of my log in items in System Preferences but am still having the problem. In my other admin account I do not have this problem. It takes about thirty seconds or so after logging in for it to start. Once it does start it blinks at least once per second.
Click to expand...

Do you have any startup items or items in ~/Library/LaunchAgents ?
 
Same Problem

Hey - I have exactly the same problem. No dock (keeps crashing) and background goes from black or grey to the regular wall paper every couple seconds. Really hope someone figured out how to resolve this!
 
Just so you don't think it's just you, I experienced the very same issues you describe. I tried removing every startup/launch item I felt might be remotely connected to the problems, and trashed dozens and dozens of prefs, etc.—without any success.

I had to ultimately restore back to Mavericks via Time Machine, and all is well again. I installed the Yosemite Beta on an external drive and the same Mac runs fine. In fact, Yosemite Beta seems much faster and stable than Mavericks. Go figure.

I sure hope someone can figure out what is going on with this whole blinking desktop picture/disappearing Dock thing because I really enjoy what I've seen of Yosemite Beta thus far!


~Huck
 
Same for me...

Has something to do with Dashboard/Spaces. :confused:

This stopped the flashing Desktop and crashing Dock for me:
Open Preferences, go to Mission Control and set Dashboard to Off.
 
Try deleting your dock plist file. It sounds like the Dock process (and maybe Finder) is crashing rapidly in the background.
 
marvelgulp said:
Has something to do with Dashboard/Spaces. :confused:

This stopped the flashing Desktop and crashing Dock for me:
Open Preferences, go to Mission Control and set Dashboard to Off.
Click to expand...

thirdeyeopen666 said:
Try deleting your dock plist file. It sounds like the Dock process (and maybe Finder) is crashing rapidly in the background.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for the suggestions. When I have time to go through the process again, I'll give both those ideas a whirl!

~Huck
 
marvelgulp said:
This stopped the flashing Desktop and crashing Dock for me: Open Preferences, go to Mission Control and set Dashboard to Off.
Click to expand...

I reinstalled the Yosemite Beta this morning and experienced the same flashing desktop picture issue until I changed Dashboard from Overlay to Off. All has been solid and well the rest of the day.

Thanks so much for your brilliant suggestion! Woo-hoo!
 
marvelgulp said:
Has something to do with Dashboard/Spaces. :confused:

This stopped the flashing Desktop and crashing Dock for me:
Open Preferences, go to Mission Control and set Dashboard to Off.
Click to expand...

You are a hero! Worked for me. Thanks for the advice!
 
Happened to me as well

This happened to me when I woke my Macbook Retina 13" up this morning on Yosemite 10.10. I didn't want to re-install this again since I have done it twice already. So, I went and changed the resolution a couple of times, back and forth, and it solved the issue. I am not sure if this is a permanent solution, or if it will appear again but I will try the steps given above (disable dock overlay etc.) if it happens again. So far it looks like a GPU Driver bug to me(may be a gnarly GPU driver backport issue from discreet newer graphics to the older ones we have) and should be reported to Apple. Although I am not sure what the Steps to Re-create should be! :(
 
Last edited:
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