[applebean]

Hello All:

My 17" iMac flat screen has been exhibiting the follow during the past three months and don't know what to do - any thoughts very much welcome:

1. Computer takes over a minute (sometimes way longer) to boot up and the desktop to appear whereas it used to fire up in barely 15 seconds prior to several months ago.

2. I cannot drag/drop any desk top files using the mouse -this includes iTunes - meaning if I click on a file/folder, I can't drag it around the desktop.

3. Some program icons appear as blue folders in the dock - internet explorer, iTunes, and other programs don't appear as icons but rather now show up as simple blue folders.

I have norton antivirus installed and ran it manually several times to make sure that I did not get a virus - none showed.

Thanks for any help..am at my wits end....

[Dr. Smoke]

1. I suggest you begin troubleshooting using the process specified in my "Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption" FAQ. Perform the steps therein in the order specified. This should reveal or correct causes of problems 1 and 2.

2. re: problem 3: Your Dock preferences or the icons in the Dock may be corrupted, perhaps as a side effect of problems caused by disk or cache corruption. Trash the Dock preferences (com.apple.dock.plist in your Home > Library > Preferences folder), log out, then log back in.

This will reset the Dock to its default values.

You will need to reconfigure your Dock after doing this as the Dock preferences specify the contents of the Dock. After the preferences are deleted and you log out/in, the Dock will revert to its default configuration. If you want a record your Dock setup before undertaking this procedure, take a screen shot of your Dock.

[applebean]

Thanks Dr. Smoke - will give those a try and thanks much for the response!

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by applebean:
I have norton antivirus installed and ran it manually several times to make sure that I did not get a virus - none showed.

You can stop worrying about a virus - there are none circulating that infect MacOS X. In fact, as many will suggest, I recommend that you not use any Symantec/Norton software on your Mac. Their OS X support and quality control is pretty poor. Norton Utilities for the Mac is known to cause far more problems than it solves.

[applebean]

Thanks for the ideas above but unfortunately none have worked.

I ran the procedures as prescribed by the doc and no unfixable errors were reported and things went fine and also deleted the dock preference file noted above - nothing has changed though: blue folders still appear in the dock and Safari has disappeared, still cannot drag folders on the desktop or anywhere else, and worse, ALL of the files on my desktop have disappeared - what happened to them - please help, or elst the spousal unit will go on a rampage....

Any and all help would be sincerely appreciated....