Desktop GONE.

I had 4 - 4.5 gigs free. I had a few applications open. I started up Quickbooks. It said there was an update. But that it couldn't download because my disk was full. I immediately checked my finder and I thought I saw the "available space" number blink but wasn't sure - it said I had about two gigs free. I quit a bunch of apps thinking that memory was filling up my disk space. Then I noticed that my Desktop was blank.

I normally have a ton of junk on my Desktop. I pulled open a finder window. Desktop was gone from the sidebar. I went to my home directory and looked. Desktop was gone as a directory. Nothing in my Trash.

I logged out and logged back in. Desktop gone.

I restarted. Desktop gone. Now I have over 5.5 gigs free.

Any way to get this back at all? I have a backup but it's not recent enough to get everything back; desktop is kinda my dumping ground.

And why, why, why did this happen? It's highly unsettling. It could have been any other directory on my computer, most of which are much more valuable.

Macbook 2ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Dec 15, 2007 10:52 PM

Dec 18, 2007 4:35 PM in response to ct4sberg

ct4sberg wrote:
I too have lost my desktop. I am unable to wait for data recovery and need to use this computer. Does anyone know how to restore the proper desktop functionality. I will worry about data recovery later as my data is non critical(sort of).I have been promised a call from Intuit tech support but so far am just waiting. Anyone who can help me?

If you are not planning to attempt data recovery, you should be able to fix your desktop like this: go to your Home folder, delete the Desktop file, and reboot. The system will notice the missing Desktop and create a new empty Desktop folder.

Do please be aware that using the computer will make data recovery less and less possible as time goes by and the "missing" files are overwritten.

Message was edited by: cavenewt