Corrupted icons in Finder and Mail

Question

Corrupted icons in Finder and Mail

My icons for files and folders often get corrupted as shown here:

http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/spag/dm/corrupted_icons.pdf

The problem is cured (temporarily) by a reboot, but not by relaunching the Finder. Strangely, the problem "spreads" like an infection: at first, only the icons in one folder viewed in the Finder are corrupted, then quickly more and more get corrupted. The bad icons even infiltrate some applications, like Mail - see the bottom two icons in the rightmost screen shot of the link. When a single file has a bad icon, I can "delete" that icon in the info window for that file, and it reverts to normal. This does not seem to work when the corrupted icon is that of a folder.

I have a suspicion that the problem tends to spread from "old" files (never folders) that pre-date OSX. But that's not much more than speculation, since many of my files are of that type. Also, the problem has spread to other macs that I "migrated" to from the one originally affected.

Any help at all - such as suggestions of how to cleanse my Mac so that this does not reoccur - would be greatly appreciated...

Sandy

iMac Intel, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Dec 3, 2008 9:52 AM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Dec 3, 2008 10:08 AM in response to Sandy MacLane

Welcome to Apple Discussions:
Have you run disk utility and repaired HD and permissions?
Also check the S.M.A.R.T. status while there.
You may have a flaky drive.
It could also be some corrupted .plists
Create a new user and see if the problem persists with the new account.
If it does, then it's a system problem - maybe hardware-related, in which case DiskWarrior might be useful.
If the problem does not occur with the new account then it's most likely corrupted files which can be dealt with.

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Answer 2

Dec 3, 2008 11:51 AM in response to nerowolfe

The problem is not hardware-related: it's followed me through several generations of Macs. To every new Mac, though, I "migrated" from an earlier one that was affected. I don't think the problem has occurred on other Macs in my work group that use the same software, for example, but were set up independently from mine.

I do believe the fault may be user-related; I do have some (rarely used) other accounts on the same Mac, and these do not appear to have been affected. However, remember that logging out and back in does not cure the problem once it's there.

Does this fact rule out certain potential sources, such as .plist files in my home Library?

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Answer 3

Dec 3, 2008 1:47 PM in response to Sandy MacLane

HI Sandy,

Try deleting these files: com.apple.finder.plist and com.apple.desktop.plist and com.apple.dock.plist

/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag those files from the Preferences folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot.

Run Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities) and Repair Disk Permissions at least once a week and ALWAYS after downloading and installing updates or any 3rd party software.

Onyx is a great disk utility to help with maintenance: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/onyx.html

Carolyn 🙂

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Answer 4

Dec 20, 2008 8:41 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

The problem is still not understood, but it seems I've been able to get rid of it. Many years ago (quite possibly still under OS9) I had given some folders special icons to make them stand out visually. I then put those folders in the toolbar of the Finder window (even now under Leopard, where dragging folders to the toolbar no longer seems to be officially encouraged but still works). In search of "anything unusual" to do with icons I now removed those pictures from the folders in their info field (so now they look normal again, like any other folders), and haven't had any more corrupted icons since. This has now been stable for about a fortnight, while before this measure I had newly corrupted icons about twice a week at least.

Caveat: I didn't remove those custom-made icons from all my folders: I simply forgot two of them (which, however, were changed later I think). So even if restoring generic icons to some folders solved the problem, the problem will most certainly be difficult to reproduce.

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