Unable to drag and drop files or folders

What happens when you try to drag/drop? Does the drag not happen (i.e. you don't see the ghost of the item you are dragging fallowing the cursor) or does the drop fail? Since you said this also effects iTunes, I'm leaning towards a problem either with your mouse or its drivers (if its a third party mouse). Try using another Apple mouse that you know works and see if it works. Good luck...

I'm having EXACTLY the same problem. I can select (single click) an icon (file or folder) in the Finder, however I cannot drag it. The icon simply does not move. I cannot move anything out of the dock.

I have reset permissions, zapped the PRAM, booted into safe boot mode, logged in as a different user, deleted the User finder prefs. NADA. I still can't move (drag) any files.

Even more fun the Console does not show anything amiss, there is no crash log. The computer is otherwise behaving normally, except for the ability to move things around.

Any ideas?

Delete the Finder's preferences file. Unfortunately you will probably not be able to do this in the Finder as you cannot drag files. However, you can do it in the terminal. Open the terminal and type this:

sudo rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist

You will be prompted for a password, so enter yours and the command should run. Then restart the computer and hopefully that will fix the problem.

Same problem here. It occured after screwing around with permissions on my hard drive and "applying to enclosed items". Yes, I know... I originally crashed completely and had to start up from the CD. Ran disk utility to fix permissions and was able to start up again. I am thinking this is a problem with the permissions on my home directory and everything inside of it.

My list of problems:
- Can not drag or drop any file in the finder or out of a window/folder. Can only open. Can't drag to the trash - but can use the menu command to "move" the file to the trash. Kind of behaves like the old "Simple Finder".
- Can not move items out of the dock.
- Can not copy and paste anything (text). Like, I tried to copy some terminal commands from this forum, but am unable to. Have to type manually.

What I have trried:
- Delete finder prefs/restart
- Reboot from CD, run disk permissions, reset password/permissions
- Creating a new admin user (new user gets the same problems)

Nothing has worked. Can someone help?

Thanks!

Sara

Same problem here! Keeps occurring even after reinstall of Leopard.

What kind of reinstall did you do? Did you format the drive? What are the permissions of the drive itself?

Topher -- did an archive and reinstall 2x and the problem came back. I finally copied all important data to my backup drive and did a erase and install on the main drive. Knock wood the problem has not occurred as of yet.

Checking the drive permissions now (after the erase), they are system rw, admin rw, everyone read only.

On a side note, I had other minor issues (cd bay wouldn't open on first eject press) and computer wouldn't sleep properly, but I think the sleep issue has something to do with the iphone in it's dock bay.

For those still affected, can you use the terminal to move files?

Try opening the terminal, and when it logs in type these commands

touch testfile.txt
mv testfile.txt ~/Desktop

After this has happened you should have the "testfile.txt" on your desktop. This will indicate whether or not it's a Finder-specific issue.

Frankly my friends, I believe its time to go back to the PowerPC architecture. I'm not seeing hardly any
problems with issues on a G4 or G5. Its gotta be something with the Intel processors the geniuses cannot comprehend and figure out. Already Jobs is mentioning Snow Leopard and here Leopard is a total failure. I can't have Leopard if I can't have my eye candy such as my haxies and APE. I am not having any issues with Tiger in my G5 and I'm sticking with it. In my estimation if Windows was written to run on a PowerPC architecture then maybe things might work a lot better. I'm afraid that Leopard is
having the same demise like Windows on Intel. I'm just an observer and giving my two cents. Just something to ponder at.

The Terminal commands work to create/move the test file to the desktop.

I have the same problem as the rest of the posters. Also when I try to install some programs, like the Spore Creature Creator, I get a an error number -10822

And all of this started when I fooled around with permission settings.

I'm having the same problem, the terminal command to make that testfile worked, guess its a good sign but i wouldn't know, I also have a couple of extra problems:
It started with VisualHub saying "Critical componats of Mac OS X are missing or damaged on your system, Without them, VisualHub is unable to continue. The affected componats is/are: - /tmp Temporary Directory. Try Repairing Permissions using Disk Utility"
So i did that using OnyX, rebooted, still didn't work, so i remember hearing about how reinstalling .3 of 10.5.3 can help replace files that are lost, so i did that and thats where it went wrong, it rebooted and it seemed to go good, but then i noticed a big ? where Camino is meant to be on my Dock and i looked in my stack and it was gone, Safari would crash on the 5th letter i typed anywhere on the browser, (Safari and Webkit Nightly) At least Firefox works so i can post this, Spotlight is gone from the menu bar, i can't drag anything from the dock and i can't drag safari from the App stack or the dock crashes.

The thing that worries me is why was Camino deleted? and Safari crashing?

If anyone has a solution to this you would be a HUGE help, i really don't want to reformat my mac because i don't have anywhere to backup my files, i don't have the money for a decent sized HDD to backup into.

Thanks all who help!!!

It sounds like it may be corruption in your LaunchServices database.
Launch /Utilities/Terminal and copy & paste this at the command line to rebuild LaunchServices:


Then press return. Wait until terminal returns to the command line. Quit Terminal. After that, log out and back in or restart. Let us know



-mj

Ok i will try that once OnyX has finished doing what ever it is it's doing, i set it to do the Automation thing in hope it will find something and fix it, the LaunchServices you said are in the list of things to fix so maybe that will hope, if not i will try your fix and hope for the best, also, what will your command do?

EDIT: Also, does anyone have a terminal command that will copy my iTunes music and my Documents to a portable harddrive, i have one but it's not enough for a full backup and i can't drag and drop or copy and paste into it.

Message was edited by: Grayfox196

Ok i did that code because OnyX did nothing to help, all i get with the code is 'File or Directory does not exist' I had to type it in manually because copy and past doesn't work.

If that option is check marked in Onyx it should run the same command. It is not check marked by default though.

The reason Terminal returned, 'File or Directory does not exist' is because every space must be in the correct place. Trying to manually input that you probably had an errant space somewhere.



-mj