Suddenly in the past two days this application 'loginwindow' is showing up on my dock. It looks like it's just a text file, but I can't quit it and I can't delete it or remove it from the dock in anyway. At the same time, my desk top and whole finder will not show up on any of my accounts on the computer. Jun 17, 2009 Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the. Jul 28, 2009 When we’re deploying Mac OS X there are a number of things that invariably end up being discussed. One of these is customizing the login window, where you type in your username and password. This might be swapping out the background of the screen, adding text or even changing out the Apple logo. To change Continue reading LoginWindow Customizations in Mac OS X.
When we’re deploying Mac OS X there are a number of things that invariably end up being discussed. One of these is customizing the login window, where you type in your username and password. This might be swapping out the background of the screen, adding text or even changing out the Apple logo.To change out the background of the loginwindow, you can specify a new location. By default the location is stored in /System/Library/CoreServices as DefaultDesktop.jpg. You could replace this image or the preferred method would more than likely be to choose your image and then alter the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist, editing the key for DesktopPicture. For example, we can use the defaults command to edit the appropriate key to be myimage.jpg in a folder called Custom on the root of the drive:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture ‘/Custom/myimage.jpg’To then go back to the original background with the default image from Apple you can use the following command (not having a key means that Mac OS X will use the original image): defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPictureYou can also edit the text displayed at the login window, above the list of users. This is a good place to remind users of acceptable use policies, announce items from IT or display a number of strings to users who might happen across the computer. To add the text defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText “By logging into this computer you are accepting the terms of our Acceptable Use Policy, which can be found at http://internal.krypted.com/Use.pdf”If you would like to go back to the system defaults, again delete the key: defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowTextYou can also replace the Apple logo that appears at the top of the login window with a different tif (should be 90×90 pxls). To do so, browse into the SecurityAgent.app at /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgent.app/Contents/Resources/and replace applelogo.tif. This can be useful for displaying a schools mascot or a companies logo, but has little other purpose beyond branding that I can think of. I usually rename the existing tif and add a new one. To rename: mv /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgent.app/Contents/Resources/applelogo.tif /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgent.app/Contents/Resources/applelogo.tif.OLDThen to copy an image called mylogo.tif from your desktop to the appropriate location: cp ~/mylogo.tif /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgent.app/Contents/Resources/applelogo.tif
jaredtheactor,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions! This is an unusual problem, without any similar reports of which I'm aware. 'loginwindow' is the process that handles user logon during startup, starts the Finder and Dock, and continues to run to handle Force Quit events, logouts, system error messages, and other system events. If something has corrupted the loginwindow code, causing the process itself to appear in the Dock, that would as you noted interfere with the Finder in all user accounts on that Mac. There are two loginwindow preferences files in the system-level /Library/Preferences folder (and another two in each user account's /Users/username/Library/Preferences folder), com.apple.loginwindow.plist and loginwindow.plist . I have no idea if deleting the two system-level .plist files while in single-user mode will help; deleting a preferences .plist will (at least in theory) force the associated program to generate a new set of default preferences, but since there's no login preference for showing that hidden system-level process in the Dock, deleting the .plists is purely a shot in the dark. The same applies to the /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist file which holds the user's Dock settings; since you've already tried using other user accounts; it's unlikely that all your user accounts just happened to pick up the same corrupted .plist at the same time. It's possible something damaged the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.dockfixup.plist file, which holds the default dock settings that are the baseline modified for each user account's Dock; I have no references as to what happens if you try to delete that .plist while in single-user mode, although it should also force creation of a new default Dock set. In your place, I'd try deleting or moving to the Desktop the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.dockfixup.plist file while booted in single-user mode (e.g., rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.dockfixup.plist followed by mac-boot). If that doesn't work, if you have another Mac running the same OS X version, you could try using FireWire target disk mode and move /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app from the host (good) Mac to the target (bad) Mac. Since that's a complete WAG, you might be safer just going directly to doing an Archive and Install (using the 'preserve users and settings' option). You may want to post this problem to the Using Mac OS X (10.3.9 and earlier) forum to see if anyone has better (preferably first-hand) advice. Good luck! Coreservices Loginwindow.app Contents Macos Loginwindow High Memory DriveCoreservices Loginwindow.app Contents Macos Loginwindow High Memory Loss
Oct 4, 2007 7:11 AM
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