Audacity icon remains in Dock

[miyoko]

Hello dear Audacity users,

Excuse my newbie question but I hope you can help me.

I uninstalled Audacity while the icon was still in Dock.
And when I rebooted the OS later a "?" mark was in Dock.

I removed it from Dock, but when I rebooted the OS again,
the "?" mark was still there. I tried several times, but no change.

I though I probably needed to remove it before uninstallation.
So I installed Audacity again,
put the icon in Dock,
removed it,
uninstall Audacity,
and rebooted the OS.

But the "?" mark was still there.

When I uninstalled Audacity, I removed not only the folder from
Application folder but also the "audacity" folder in the user library.

Of course it's not a big problem, but a little annoying...
Could anyone help me remove the spooky "?" mark?

Thank you!

[kozikowski]

Control-Click on the icon > Show in Finder
That should show you where the icon points. When I Control-Click (right-click if you have a two button mouse) on my Audacity icon, it points to the "Audacity" folder.

Search for the Audacity folder reveals that it's in /Applications

I have Finder set to show me extensions (Finder > Preferences > Show Extensions) so I can see "Audacity.app" where your computer may only show you "Audacity."

What happens if you try to launch the ? application?

Koz

[miyoko]

Thank you so much for your reply, kozikowski!

(NOTE: I'm using Mac in Japanese version and the wordings of these dialogs/commands in English may differ from what they are in English version.)

When I control-clicked on the "?" icon, it showed only Option > Remove from Dock and no other options.
When I do the same thing on the other icons in Dock, it shows other options like Show in Finder etc. normally.

And if I click on the "?" icon nothing happens.

Do you have any idea what's happening?

[kozikowski]

Which OS-X do you have? Apple > About This Computer.
Koz

[kozikowski]

I uninstalled Audacity while the icon was still in Dock.
And when I rebooted the OS later a "?" mark was in Dock.

When I delete an application, the icon stays in the dock and I have to manually remove it. Having the icon change to something else is pretty unusual.

How did you uninstall Audacity? It's not that easy to do. Did you trash the config file?

Did you empty the trash? Is the program download still around on your computer? I keep all the DMG download files and I've had the Mac "find" them by accident and do strange things.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I got a note from one of the soon-to-be Mac Geniuses on 6West. That's an icon for a damaged Sim Link. It should vanish if you click and move it slightly up to the desktop instead of trying to move it to a specific place.

If it still doesn't vanish you may need to repair permissions.

Go > Utilities > Disk Utilities > Select your System Drive > Repair Permissions.

Koz

[miyoko]

I got a note from one of the soon-to-be Mac Geniuses on 6West. That's an icon for a damaged Sim Link. It should vanish if you click and move it slightly up to the desktop instead of trying to move it to a specific place.

If it still doesn't vanish you may need to repair permissions.

Go > Utilities > Disk Utilities > Select your System Drive > Repair Permissions.

Koz

Thank you so much for your help, kozikowski.

My Mac OS X is ver.10.6.8.

Audacity folders were still in Trash when I got your messages, so I emptied it (together with the DMG file of Audacity).
I removed the icon by dragging it slightly up from Dock. And then I did "Repair Permissions" and rebooted the OS.
And I found out that the question icon was still in Dock.

What I meant by "uninstalled Audacity" before was that I removed Audacity folder from /Application and also /usr/local/lib/Application Support/audacity.
Was it an inappropriate way to "uninstall" the software?

[kozikowski]

It's perfectly appropriate. That's why I can't think where that "?" is coming from. Or at least I know where it's coming from, I don't know why it's sticky.

When I try to move an icon from the dock up slightly, a ghost image of the icon follows me up and the other icons expand into the hole. Then I put it back and the other icons scoot out of the way. What happens if you try to move the ??.

Koz

[miyoko]

It's perfectly appropriate. That's why I can't think where that "?" is coming from. Or at least I know where it's coming from, I don't know why it's sticky.

When I try to move an icon from the dock up slightly, a ghost image of the icon follows me up and the other icons expand into the hole. Then I put it back and the other icons scoot out of the way. What happens if you try to move the ??.

Koz

Hello, kozikowski.

The ? icon (and the other icons around) behaves exactly like you described.

I actually found out that some other softwares (ex. Skype, GoogleTalk) and also Login Items have problems as well (like the build-in webcam is not recognized any longer, some of the login items show "Unknown" in the System Preferences > Account, etc.)

So, I thought about reinstalling the OS, but when I made a new account to see if the problems remain there or not, everything seemed to work just fine. So, I guess I will just start using the new account instead...

Thank you very much for your kind help!