Roaming desktop icons

10.6.7 now out, this very very un-Apple like annoying problem is still here!

Denmark here calling.

I have the same problem, I got a Mac Pro dual-CPU-westmere in the middle of january 2011. I have been through Mac OS X v.10.6.3 that it came with and up to today 28. june 2011 with v.10.6.8. The icon bug with ocassionally moving desktop icon after a reboot/startup is still going strong. Its not every time but sometimes the icons have moved all to the right. Pretty anoying I would say. The Mac OS is all about nice grapical User Interface. But I could do without the moving desktop icons!
;o)

Could it be some corrupt prefs files anywhere???

Does anybody know something about that???

I just had all my icons moved to the right today!

I hope it is fixed in Lion! (v.10.7)

greetz
Jesper, Denmark.

with 10.5 the app

desktop icon manager (2.0.2)

http://www.parker9.com/desktopIconManager2.0.html#d

is a resolution for me.

(Every time I copy some file over LAN to the desktop of the Leo-Mac, the icons are at the right side of the screen.)

it should work with 10.6 - because it's an apple-script, but I have not tested it yet.

Without reason or warning my desktop icons line up on the left side in alphabetical order. Also happens with subfolders. Haven't noticed any pattern of association with reboot or moving content from web link to desktop.

Is happening both on a MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, each running OS Lion. Though noticed that it happened (more rarely) while still using OS 10.6.

Really frustrating! As I use my Mac in the same way that I use the space on my real desk. The location of folders and files are 'cognitive artifacts' of my work materials and flow. It takes a lot of time to resort files and folders to project or task collections.

Thanks for all prior suggestions. But it doesn't seem that there is a consistently successful (or persistent) solution.

Well since I upgraded to Lion (OS 10.7) a few weeks ago I've had the same problem happen at least 3 times. Once all bunched up and on top of one another on the right and twice in 3 neat rows, but on the right.

I've just tried Thomas A Reed's solution of removing a corrupt .DS_Store file in your desktop folder by pasting text into Terminal (I just opened it, pasted into the window, hit return, waited a bit until some more text appeared and then closed Terminal, is that correct?). I'll let you know how that goes.

I never had this problem in 10.6.x, but now that I've upgraded to 10.7, I have it on all my computers.

This is extremely annyoing.

Somebody suggested deleting the com.apple.finder.plist prefs file. Has anybody tried this yet?

I have the same problem. I store 20-40 icons on the desktop and group them by different criteria (things I currently work on, things to review later, sometimes by project) - every now and then, after a shutdown/restart, the icons are lined up along the right side of the screen.

Very, very annoying bug, which has cost me a lot of nerves and time, which has existed for long time. I wonder if Apple reads these discussions at all?

I have OS 10.6.8 and I have the same problem. It is dissapointing to hear that Lion has the same annoying problem...

Apple PLEASE say something (at least acknowledge the problem), since this really stupid problem causes more grief than it should...

Nope, Thomas A Reed's solution of removing a corrupt .DS_Store file in your desktop folder by pasting text into Terminal didn't work, or it worked for a few days and then the icons all moved to the right side.

Deleting the com.apple.finder.plist prefs file - does that work?

It's surprising how irritating it is when you can't find things on the desktop. Probably Apple don't read most of the discussions, so to help them notice it might be a good idea to:

- Send a (Safari) bug report - even though it's about the OS not Safari.

- Start up new discussions along the lines of"Roaming desktop icons problem is annoying - need fix".

Any other suggestions to get Apple to notice?

After a long time it happened this morning again. I noticed that while starting Adobe Illustrator afterwards an unusual warning window came about "FM Core could not be loeaded" (Suitcase?). As i said i had at least 6 weeks nothing, i was already hoping it was gone. Could be Suitcase the problem?

@charlesfromzurich: No, I don't think that this is the problem because I am neither using Illustrator nor Suitcase and stil have the problem.

I'm starting to suspect some me.com glitch, because whenever the problem occurs, it occurs on _all_ my machines that synchronize via me.com, so maybe the .DS_store file is corrupted that way? Are you people also using me.com or does the problem appear even if you are not synchronizing any data?

@David from Sydney: No, deleting com.apple.finder.plist did not work in the long run. The problem reappeared after a while.

i do use me.com on my laptop (activated and synchonizing), i do not use me.com on my desktop computer (not activated) and the bug happens on both laptop and desktop.

@horstp

Hi there

I have the same desktop icons moving occasionally.

(Mac Pro mid 2010, with SSD harddisks)

The problem has been on both Snow Leopard and Lion.

I have tryed to delete the .DS_Store file.

Maybe perhaps, I'm not sure.

It did help for a little while,

but the moving desktop icons

appear occasional from time to time again, but not as often as in Snow Leopard.

I'm using Extensis Suitcase Fusion

(latest version, 14.0.6)

I'm also using use Adobe Creative Suite 5.0

But I don't have a me.com account at all.

The only thing I use the "Sync" feature in Mac OS X fore

is to sync my Google Gmail calendar in to iCal.

That works just as it is suposed to do.

It could be fun to find a the right cause of this issue.

It could be the .DS_Store file getting corrupt or another Finder preference file.

But the question is what is causing it to be corrupt?

greetings

simweb