Repeatedly getting question marks on my dock apps...

I'm not moving or deleting anything, but a bunch of my dock's apps keep getting question marks on 'em and I have to go find the app and make a new shortcut. This happens on both our MacBook (OS 10.5.6) and our old G4 running OS 10.4.11. Each computer just has one user account set up.
This is slowly driving us crazy. Help!!?? I've searched and search on the support pages and can't find anything on this except stuff that says I must have deleted the apps, etc.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Howdy Ferd II,
Nope, not using anything to modify dock...and not using any non-apple maintenance or utilities. Not aware of any cache cleaning utilities either. I'm not savvy enough to have set up any of that.
The apps are usually MS Office apps and Adobe apps (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat). My Quicken app has done it too. Oh, and my Canon ImageBrowser. Those are all the apps I use the most, so pretty much everything.
Except, iTunes has never done it...I use that a lot. And Safari....Can't remember if Safari has ever done it.
All of the above is referring to the laptop, but the desktop computer is pretty bare bones, too. No mods other than basic system with a few apps installed. We mostly use Safari, an older Photoshop, and MS office on it. Same kind of behavior. Never with iTunes, though!
When I got the laptop a year ago, I thought I'd not have this issue that I'd been dealing with on the desktop machine. Then when it started happening on the laptop, I figured there'd be other people chiming in that this happens to THEM too, but so far none of that......! So it is a puzzlement.
E.

Similar Messages

Not able to get rid of a Question mark in the Dock

A friend got stuck with a Question Mark in the Dock of his 4 year old iMac that was linked to an app not compatible anymore with his latest 10.8.2 version ( guess it was a Power PC app, before Mountain Lion, he was still on Leopard ). He apparently deleted the app and some dependencies manually ( instead of using App Cleaner & Co. ) and now whenever he is hovering over that Question Mark, even before being even able to pull it out from the Dock, the screen flashes up white and the Finder resets.
Is there a way to access the Dock through an element of his user library to get rid of that Mark, or even through a Terminal command ( not that I like to delve in there, but Terminal commands have helped me personally quite often ) ?
Does the Dock have a dedicated place in the Library's User Folder ? Couldn't find anything on my own Mac.
Thanks for any clue ....

Right clicking on it is not even an option, just hovering over it seems to induce a "nuclear" reset of the whole desktop and graphic card on the iMac.
Have meanwhile found a possible solution by erasing the dock preference file in the user/library/preferences folder to reset the dock to it's default state. Will try this out through a Skype conversation with that Buddy.
Was seen here :
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16447109#16447109
Thank you for stepping in. Good to know that people are still willing to help in this community.
Greetz to the UK from France

I updated to Yosemite and now I can't open my YNAB finance app. There is a question mark in the Dock where the App should be and when I hover over the question mark it does say YNAB but I can't open it.

I updated to Yosemite and now I can't open my YNAB finance app. There is a question mark in the Dock where the App should be and when I hover over the question mark it does say YNAB but I can't open it. When I double click on the question mark nothing happens. Has the link to YNAB been broken with the update? Has this happened to anyone else?

Check the Application folder.
If it is not there, contact YNAB Finance for a OS X Yosemite compatible version of the application.
Best.

Since Lion system profiler is now a question mark in the dock. Can i get it back?

Since Lion, system profiler is now a question mark in the dock. Can I get it back? dsso

In Lion, there is no Systim Profiler. It is System Information now located in the Utilities Folder. Open that up and select to keep it in the Dock.
Drag the icon for system profiler off the Dock.

Why do i have a question mark instead of the app picture. It wont let me use the app either.

Why do i have a question mark instead of the app picture. It wont let me use the app either.

Where is your Calculator application located? Before you can put it into the Dock you need to remove the Question Mark. Select it with the mouse and drag it out of the until it "poofs" away. Now locate Calculator and drag its icon into the Dock.

How do I remove the question mark on my dock? When I move my cursor over it it reads "photos".

How do I remove the question mark on my dock?
When I move my cursor over it it reads "photos".

Everything in the Dock is an alias.... that is a tiny file that points to the original app, folder or file.
If the original app, folder or file is missing or not accessible in some other way (deleted?), it displays a question mark.
You remove it the same way you remove any icon from the Dock.
Simply drag the icon up away from the doc a couple of inches and let go of it.
It should just disappear with a poof and some clouds.

IMac running 10.7.5 and have 2 question marks from old PPC apps, which I cannot locate to remove from the system? Any suggestions please?

iMac running 10.7.5 and have 2 question marks from old PPC apps, which I cannot locate any links to remove from the system? Any suggestions please?

Hello, if those Question marks are in the Dock, it means OSX can't find them either.
Right click on the Q mark & choose Remove from Dock, might be Roght click or click, then Options>Remove from dock on later OSX versions.
Sometimes you can just drag it of the Dock, or CMD +drag it off.

Hi Forum, can u please help? iRecently bought a mac pro & my garageband 11 was working fine but now it's showing a question mark in the dock but it won't open. I think it may have been accidentally trashed. I've searched the trash & spotlighted. What now?

Hi Forum, can u please help? iRecently bought a macbook pro and garageband 11 was working fine but now it's showing a question mark in the dock and it won't open. I think it may have been accidentally trashed. I've searched the trash and spotlighted but don't know what to do next. Any ideas? Thanks.

How did you install GarageBand on your Mac? Did it come preinstalled with the other iLife applications?
If your MacOS supports the AppStore, you should be able to redownload GarageBand from the AppStore, see this support Article: OS X: About OS X Recovery on how to download again:
Double-click the App Store icon in the dock.
Enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
If you haven't previously accepted your bundled iLife applications within the Mac App Store, you should see your iLife applications appear in the Accept portion of the screen. Click Accept.
You may be asked for your Apple ID and password once again. Your iLife applications now move to the Purchased section. These applications are part of the software that came with your Lion based computer. Your account will not be charged for them. Click Install to complete installation of your applications.
Regards
Léonie

Adobe bridge appears as a question mark on iMac dock and will not open, why?

Adobe bridge appears as a question mark on iMac dock and will not open, why?

Because your Bridge install is somehow messed up.
BOILERPLATE TEXT:
If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand, such as your platform (Mac or Win), exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop and of Bridge, machine specs, what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far, what error message(s) you receive, if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them, etc., someone may be able to help you.
Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
Thanks!

Accidentally removed from,sharing and permissions the admin user,and now i do not when i find the home icon at my computer i do not have permmission,and the mac does not works properly,lots of question mark at the dock ,please help

accidentally removed from,sharing and permissions the admin user,and now i do not when i find the home icon at my computer i do not have permmission,and the mac does not works properly,lots of question mark at the dock ,please help

I'm going to assume that since you deleted your hard drive and all its files, you had a backup, yes? If the backup has an OS (bootable clone), then you can boot into it by holding down the option key when you start up you iMac and choose the backup drive. Then use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to copy the files back to your iMac.

Why do I get question marks on iphoto instead of the photos?

Why do I get question marks on iphoto instead of the photos?

Possibly because you have set iPhoto to refer to photos stored elsewhere rather than copying them into its own library; and you've moved the photos.
If you have it set this way, Preferences>Advanced - 'Copy items to the iPhoto Library' will be unchecked.

How to remove the question mark from the dock

How do I remove the question mark from the dock. Nothing I tried works.

What have you tried?
What happens when you click on it? Does a menu appear?
Would you provide a screen shot (SHIFT COMMAND 4).
Ciao.

How can I remove a Question Mark icon from Dock?

Long story short, I installed GeekTool from the AppStore.
The first thing I noticed was it put a unremovable icon on my dock.
So, I found and deleted the app (in Finder), and then I ended up with a Question Mark Icon on my Dock:
If I try and Drag/Drop it off my Dock, it floats back If I control click/right click on it, I get an 'Options' menu, with nothing under it.
After searching and searching and searching the Support Communities I found and tried the following: removed the com.apple.dockfixup.plist file, and did the 'killall Dock' command in terminal, both failed..
To make matters worse... I said to myself, perhaps if I reinstalled it again, and tried from scratch, I could find some 'uninstaller' either in the app, or in the AppStore. I found out the hard way, the AppStore does not have an Uninstaller. Now I have TWO icons I can not remove:
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Jay

Have you checked your Accounts login items for geektool? If so remove it.
Did you check your Activity Monitor to see if geektool.app is running (maybe two since you said you reinsalled two). If so kill it (or them).
Log out and log back in. Then see if you can drag the icons out of the dock.
Update: Actually if you do find them in your login items then you don't have to kill them, just log out and back in and try clearing the dock.
You also want to delete the preference pane in your ~/Library/PreferencePanes.

Why Are there question marks in my dock that says iphoto, imovie and imovie hd after resetting my dock?

My iBook G4 used to belong to my mums friend. After having it and using it for 2 years, I did a dock reset. Now There are question marks saying iphoto, imovie and imovie hd. I don't have the installation disk with me so how do I get these apps back?

Do you know which versions they were? Sometimes they came on an iLife disc; sometimes on an Applications disc or Restore disc with the original software package that came with the iBook when it was new.
Doing a Dock reset would not have removed these applications from the Applications folder.
If they are no longer in the Applications folder, you will have to reinstall them from a disc.
Which exact iBook model is it?
You can choose from this list:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/ibook/index-ibook.html

Getting question marks instead of images on some pages

any help would be greatly appreciated. when opening some pages i get blue box with white question mark in it. i have been through a complete erase and install. have installed all updates. when it tells me there is an error, i go to window/activity and it says host server not found. talked to internet provider they seem to have no clue.not sure what else i can do PLEASE HELP!!!!
mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.6)
mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Mom, et al. . .
I agree the internet address would be very helpful so we could test it.
I do have a few suggestions for at least making sure a simple clean up is not the problem:
First: Do you have internet apps SpeedDownload, iGetter, PithHelmet, Acid Search, Safari Enhancer ? Or Norton or Virex? Sometimes non-apple internet apps need updating or uninstalling.
Also, if the problem is only in Safari, have you done all of the following?
(Do these one at a time, then Restart Safari)
1. Empty your cache & History settings via the Safari menu
2. Trash your Icons Folder:
HD>Users>Home>YourName>Library>Safari -->Icons
Restart Safari and a new folder will be automatically regenerated.
(This folder saves favicons of all the sites you visit. Needs cleaning periodically -- or you can change that file's preferences to "Read Only"
rather than "Read & Write." This will keep it from growing in size.)
3. Launch Font Book and check all fonts for duplicates. A duplicated font will have a bullet beside the font family and you can resolve duplicates by selecting the font and at the menu bar, go to Edit > Resolve Duplicates.
Do this for each font with a bullet next to it.
If you're still having problems:
4. Shut down your computer . . . unplug the computer, modem, and router, if you have one. Let everything sit for 2-3 minutes. Plug everything back in, start up your modem & router, then restart your computer.
Hope this helps

Repeatedly getting question marks on my dock apps...

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for