I broke my Dock in leopard!

November 5, 2007 4:41 PM

I broke my dock in Leopard. Help.

I tried to install a different look to my Dock using LeopardDocks.com. The instructions say to simply go to core services/dock and to "show package contents" on the Dock, replace the files, kill the dock and reboot and your new dock will appear.

I accidently deleted the folders in the package contents, so I recreated them, then dragged the new files in, but now the dock won't launch. I get the error: "You can't open the application "Dock" because it is not supported on this architecture" if I double click on the Dock in Core Services.

Rebooting still leaves me with no dock. Any suggestions beyond a reinstall?

posted by Mark to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Try dropping in one from another machine? Mine says it's owed by "system" with "wheel" and "everyone" having read only access.

I could email you mine.

In the future, zip files like that before modding them.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:12 PM on November 5, 2007

I am not in front of my MacBook at the moment, but could you just drag the dock application from your Leopard install DVD into the right place on your hard disk?
posted by AndrewStephens at 5:25 PM on November 5, 2007

I'm sure that is all I have to do (or just a reinstall) but the CD is at work and I was just curious if there was an easy fix.
posted by Mark at 5:31 PM on November 5, 2007

I just discovered Pacifist, which allows you to browse .pkg files, and extract them to disk (in nice nested-folder format), so if you know the location in your file structure that is borked, Pacifist will allow you to browse the contents of your Leopard install disk and grab the fiels you need.
posted by misterbrandt at 6:31 PM on November 5, 2007

cjorgensen is probably right, the folders inside the dock application probably didn't have the same permissions as the ones you created yourself in the Finder.

If you're using Leopard, are you using Time Machine? You could just pull in the backup.

If you're not using Time Machine, consider this your wake up call to start doing backups :)
posted by bcwinters at 7:18 PM on November 5, 2007

Any suggestions beyond a reinstall?

Here's one - don't overwrite system applications without backing them up first, and be suspect of any software that asks you to do so.
posted by chundo at 7:56 PM on November 5, 2007

you said you recreated the folders but did you recreate everything inside them? i just browsed the contents of the dock.app and there seems to be lots of files inside the 2 folders...

I even took a pic...
posted by hummercash at 9:48 PM on November 5, 2007

Thanks everyone, lesson learned.

cjorgensen was nice enough to mail me over his dock.app, I replaced mine with it and everything is back to normal.
posted by Mark at 4:41 AM on November 6, 2007