No icons???? Snow Leopard wtf?

Repair permissions and restart.

HI,

If what "baltwo" suggests first, doesn't help... try deleting these files.

com.apple.finder.plist

com.apple.desktop.plist

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




Carolyn 🙂

Deleting the files didn't fix the problem for me but did make a lot of extra work restoring my original settings.

Go to Finder Preferences and check show hard discs.

Guess that happens when someone jumps in without starting their own thread.

That won't affect the missing icons in Applications.

i have a similar problem. i didn't notice any missing icons after installing leopard but i did notice many missing ones when trying to install new apps. for example i opened the fontexplorer installer last night and it appeared to be empty except for the background graphics, but the FE folder was there and the shortcut folder to the applications folder was there too and they function just fine. i can run the app as normal i just can't see it. i then tried other installers and they were too missing icons except for ones with default folder icons.

in the info window there is no icon box present so you can't assign a new icon either.

Cerda19 wrote:
I just installed snow leopard and *** the icons in applications and on the desktop don't show??

1. How did you install SL?

2. What are the view settings for the Applications folder (use command + J to display them).

3. Do you just get generic application icons or what?

4. What Mac do you see this with? Do you wait a few seconds for the application's own icon to be displayed in place of a generic one when you first open the folder? (On slower Macs, this can take longer than on faster ones.)

This also happened to me very soon after a clean install.
More specifically, by "clean" I mean that I reformatted the drive, reinstalled a fresh 10.5 (with no post-installation changes or updates), and then installed 10.6 (by inserting the upgrade disk while running 10.5 and following the instructions).
The point at which the icons disappeared is hard to pin down exactly, but it happened within minutes after upgrading 10.6. (The only thing I have done since then is run "Software Update", and install Xcode. I noticed nearly all the icons in the Applications directory were missing. By "missing", i mean entirely blank/transparent. I did not go into this directory earlier, so the icons might have been missing the whole time. Since then, I've noticed icons in other places (the desktop) are blank.)

I haven't had any trouble with the icons on the dock yet.
I've read other forums where people who have this problem sometimes get pixelated icons on the dock:
http://macthemes2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=542917

Here are some more links to other people who seem to be having this problem:
http://boards.ign.com/macgeneralboard/b5146/185160349/p1/?2
http://betterthanlife.co.uk/wp/2009/09/08/osx-10-6-snow-leopard-missing-icons-is sue-suggested-solution/

I am going to reinstall 10.6 again, and see if the problem continues.

Actually, after shutting down and turning on, the problem seems to have fixed itself. (-slap-) I'll post again if the problem returns.

An easier option that works for me is just to quit Finder and relaunch it. You can use TinkerTool to add a Quit menu item to Finder's menu, or logout, or restart - it all amounts to the same thing: the Finder gets refreshed.

Repairing Permissions and restarting Finder (using Tinkertool) solved the problem for me.

My install of Snow Leopard was a simple "Upgrade" rather than wipe n reinstall...

I just installed Snow Leopard from scratch and I was having the same problem. In my case it seemed to be related to the Mac OS X Snow Leopard install DVD still being mounted. While I was troubleshooting this problem I checked 'Hard disks' under 'Show these items on the desktop' in Finder Preferences. The hard disk name was shown but no icon. I ejected the Mac OS X Snow Leopard install DVD and the hard disk icon was shown! The icons in the GO menu were still not shown, but a reboot took care of that.

Regards,
Gijsbert