athansor, this is why you have a backup of your dock! if you would of restored the dock then your system would of been fine.. and you wouldnt of had to revert to some 10.2.3 OS you installed... theres no reason to warn you, cause you use this stuff at your own risk.. next time something with your dock happens.. remember.. its just a application, it doesnt really have aynthing to do with the core system.. its just a service that runs at startup... "core services" which can easily be replaced with a working copy.. ;) as far as the other programs not working correctly.. that could of just been coincidence because they were trying to talk to your damaged dock! ;) good luck in the future.