MacOS – What process is in charge of the background image on Mac OS

bugmacos

I have a problem that occurs seemingly randomly on my Macbook Pro, 13" 2010, running 10.7. The background on the secondary screen (which is actually the laptop screen itself, the primary screen is a Cinema Display) will go gray. I can still use the screen, it shows everything but the background image. I can even drag desktop icons to that screen. Changing the wallpaper does nothing.

Most of the users in this discussion seem to be having a similar issue.

I tried "killAll Finder" to see if I could get it to reset itself (it will fix itself after reboot). Apparently, that process is not in charge of the background image, because the background stays while the desktop itself (file icons on the desktop) disappears while Finder is restarting.

So, is there a process I can try restarting that will reset the wallpaper state?

Best Answer

The Dock process is responsible for Launchpad, Mission Control, the Dock and the Desktop Background.

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MacOS – OSX hangs on startup after large file search caused a crash (Mavericks 10.9.5)

It boots! I finally found a thread of others with identical symptoms: Gray screen on normal boot, blue screen with lines even when booting to recovery, crazy fan spinning.

It was my GPU.

Standard problem for this model of macbook, and Apple willfully ignores it.

Instructions on how to fix it can be found in this thread.

I'm reposting them here for the sake of making this information as widely available as possible.

Disable your AMD graphics card by doing the following (it'll force you to use your intel graphics card instead -- not powerful, but functional).

/sbin/fsck -fy /
/sbin/mount -uw /
mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
touch /System/Library/Extensions
exit

Reboot and your computer will startup as normal.

MacOS – Cannot set Finder window background colour / image

Okay, so I just found a work around instead of a solution..

Made a new folder, changed background image and dragged everything over..

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm sure it would have worked but it seemed like a lot to try just to change the background on a folder.. A pretty pointless thing anyway really!

Best Answer

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MacOS – OSX hangs on startup after large file search caused a crash (Mavericks 10.9.5)

MacOS – Cannot set Finder window background colour / image

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