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BartleyR7 Author

Level 1

5 points

Rearranging Icons on the Desktop

Hello everyone. I had this problem before 10.6, but it's only been occurring the past few days. I have my icons arranged a certain way, and whenever I restart, shutdown, or simply logout/login, my icons are completely rearranged. I have my dock on the right-hand side of my screen, and the icons (with the exception of the Macintosh HD icon) get pushed to the far right. Some pictures of the before and after are linked below.

Before: http://www.bartleyrichardson.com/public_img/icon-before.jpg
After: http://www.bartleyrichardson.com/public_img/icon-after.jpg

I have tried the following:
- Deleted the desktop.plist file from /Users/<me>/Library/Preferences/
- Attempted to change the size (both icons and grid)
- Tried to move the icons to another place on the desktop far away from the dock
- Made the dock occupy the full vertical space on the right-hand side
- Made the dock as small as possible

None of the above options made any difference. The one thing that did work was to move the dock back down to the bottom of the screen. Then my icons stayed in their proper arrangement.

I've also tried all of the combinations under "View Options" for my icons. This includes arranging by name, last modified, aligning to grid, and no arrangement at all. None of these seem to make any difference. As you can probably tell by the pictures, my icons seem to be arranged in alpha/numeric order upon restart/login (no matter what I've told Finder to do).

This started happening after the last 10.5 update (10.5.8). It persists under 10.6. I'd be extremely grateful for any help!

MacBook Pro 15" unibody (early 2009), Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 28, 2009 3:36 PM

84 replies

Khalisto

Level 1

0 points

Sep 16, 2010 1:34 AM in response to Shisha

I don't think that the files from Little Snitch are the source of this problem.
I have this problem, about each 15/20 days, and I have not these files on my computer.

Sep 18, 2010 2:41 AM in response to BartleyR7

Good Morning friends, at least here in Germany it is still morning or lunch time...

Back to the topic...

I noticed the problem, exactly the time when I left my mac mini "sleep" over night and restart it the next day. Everything was sorted new...

On my Macbook Pro this problem doesn't occur!
BUT: there I have the setting mentioned befor "sort grid", and it seems to work pretty fine for me!

Further more I don't think that any app cause this specific problem, so don't worry and delete all your apps 😀

Have a nice weekend...

Best wishes Sebastian

ApMaX

Level 2

154 points

Nov 12, 2010 12:52 AM in response to BartleyR7

The problem persists with Mac OS X 10.6.5.

Nov 29, 2010 2:20 AM in response to BartleyR7

The problem still persist in 10.6.5.

The problem starts when for example:
1. Safari: Get the popup window to upload a file from desktop.
2. iPhoto: Get the popup window when importing photos

...then the next time you restart the Mac, the icons will be sorted alphabetically on desktop, and therefore "destroy" the manual arrangement of these.

Jan 9, 2011 7:34 PM in response to BartleyR7

Hi all.

For what it's worth, I also have the problem...

OS X 10.6.5

regaber

Level 1

0 points

Jan 19, 2011 3:48 AM in response to BartleyR7

Same maddening problem here...

Got my iMac four months ago, the bug was already there.
Thing is, the problem only appears like once a week, just enough time for me to forget about it and get used to my new icons arrangement...

I have another iMac 21.5 from 2009, this one doesn't have the problem.

Just tried about every solution here, including a whole lot of onyx maintenance... now to wait...
This is so frustrating.

Jan 19, 2011 5:21 AM in response to BartleyR7

Hi all.

How come it says this question is answered???

Thanks.

vakras

Level 1

9 points

Jan 20, 2011 5:06 PM in response to BartleyR7

The problem is certainly NOT resolved, and it beggars belief that any such claim is made. My intel laptop, now on 10.6.6, had its icons rearranged after a normal shutdown when I started the machine the next day. I rearranged them, used the computer, and the next day Snow Leopard placed them all on the right, AGAIN. I bought this machine new in 2007, about a week after the release of Leopard, and never had the problem with Leopard. I did not upgrade to Snow Leopard until 10.6.4 - because of the bugs (you know the ones: bugs that wiped out user accounts when remotely logging into other computers; and of course, the best one being when Apple so botched 10.6.3 so bad, that they pulled it within a few days of its release replacing it with 10.6.3 v1).

As for the culprits… I don't have "blue harvest" (whatever that is), or "little snitch" (whatever that is), or any of the other programs cited as the cause.

A Windows exec, when comparing Windows 7 with 10.6.2 (a while ago now), described OSX 10.6 as an "experimental" OS. OSX, in the 10.6 version, is certainly too buggy to be anything but an experiment! It is really amateurish stuff from Apple.

I resolved my problem with Tech Tool Pro. I defragmented the files and then defragmented the entire volume into one contiguous block.

It seems that the problem has to do with Apple. I had optimised the volume & consolidated all the files to one contiguous block after 10.6.4. Apple's own "optimisation" which occurred with the upgrade to 10.6.6 RE-fragmented the entire volume.

I don't think Apple care, they're working on their next experiment, Lion….

Jan 22, 2011 1:34 PM in response to vakras

I wonder if it might be an issue with "permissions"… Maybe your user account does not have the permissions to change these parameters.

Try using the Disk Utility to "Repair permissions", then change the desktop parameters, then restart…

Then come back here to tell us if this worked.

Good luck!

Jan 28, 2011 4:40 AM in response to fdboucher

So?

Did my solution solve your problem?

Feb 9, 2011 9:33 AM in response to fdboucher

Not to rub you the wrong way, but this is one of the first things I tried. Nothing suggested here works. And it's a blasphemy to dare call the issue resolved.

I'm now reduced to making screenshots of various folders so that I waste as little time as possible whenever this bug happens again (every 3-4 restarts). This is a total aberration.

Anyone from Apple reading this? I've used Macs since System 6, and never had such a MAJOR bug. I regret very much ever upgrading to 10.6. As far as I'm concerned, Snow Leopard should be an extinct species.

Feb 9, 2011 12:27 PM in response to Patrick McDonald

Patrick,

this suggestion HAS worked for some friends here.

You need to repair the authorizations, and also trash the Finder preferences files, in order to create new pref files with the necessary authorizations for you to modify these prefs… Then restart the Finder, then change your desktop file preferences. These last changes should be permanent…

Feb 9, 2011 2:43 PM in response to vakras

Hi Vakras.

For what it's worth: on 2011-01-23 I changed my View Options for the desktop to "None". (They were set at "Align to grid" or something like that).

As of 2011-02-09 they're still holding. Holding my breath!

Feb 10, 2011 2:30 PM in response to Michel the drycleaner

1. "Ctrl-Click" on the desktop
2. From the menu that pops up, choose the option "Show View Options"
3a. If the window that opens is titled "Desktop": Choous "Arrange by": None
3b(1). If the window that opens is NOT titled "Desktop": put the following file on the desktop: Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
3b(2). Go to System Preferences>Desktop & Screen Saver and enter your new preferences in order to regenerate the Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist (you may then trash that file on the desktop).

vakras

Level 1

9 points

Feb 11, 2011 4:01 PM in response to fdboucher

boucher - you can wonder all you like - - It is a given that someone, anyone, who defragments their entire machine and volumes would also have their permissions in order. And, since i made my volume into a contiguous block it has been unproblematic in this sense.

This Apple OS 10.6 shortcoming is not limited to desktop icons. Copying one folder from an external drive onto the desktop to replace a folder of the same name that already exists on the desktop ALSO rearranges the contents of that folder, and sometimes, just erases the entire contents of that folder leaving nothing in it. This does not happen on the G3 which runs Jaguar, or the G4 which is on Tiger, and never did so on the Intel laptop when it was on Leopard until a few months ago.

Maybe it's the way that the still very buggy SnowLeo which erased User Profiles when linked remotely to other computers works... Hardly the kind of OS that a professional would want to use.

Rearranging Icons on the Desktop