Multiple Icons appear at multiple places on desktop when one is dragged.

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Level 1

23 points

Multiple Icons appear at multiple places on desktop when one is dragged.

Hello,

I'm suddenly having issues with OS10.13.6 If I drag a folder, saved file icon around on desktop multiple icons of that folder or file reappear all around the desktop, usually at places they've once resided. If I get them to disappear, just dragging any icon around makes them reappear at the same new/old places. Also, opening a folder and dragging it causes multiple ghosts of the of the movement of the file to appear.

I've tried deleting: apple.preference.plist, and preference.plist's of desktop, and finder but it was no help.

I logged in under different User account and same thing happens.

Any ideas on a fix? It's driving me crazy cause you can't drag anything without having icons reappear.

Even if I move them to a separate folder on desktop and drag a different icon around the desktop the icons continue to reappear, even the ones I've moved into another folder.

Mac Pro, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 8, 2022 4:26 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Roastaman Author

Level 1

23 points

Jun 8, 2022 6:56 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi,

I don't have a "Stack by" option, only a "Sort by." I have "Sort by:" as None. If I choose "Sort by" name then my desktop icons will be all rearranged and not as I want them.

To me this looks like something got corrupted. When I can get rid of all the false folders and icons, all I have to do is highlight one and move it around the desktop like a paint brush and all the false folders and icons reappear as the selected one passes over the area where they used to reside at any one time. The more places it was the more "false" icons/folders appear. I can get up to 6 or more icons to appear at once and then the only way to get them to disappear is to select the "real" icon in such a way that the fakes disappear. It's not easy to do.

This is a new issue that I've never seen before. I don't exactly see how changing the view option fixes this.

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Answer 2

Roastaman Author

Level 1

23 points

Jun 11, 2022 4:51 PM in response to BDAqua

So, in a last ditch effort to solve this problem I decided to remove the NVIDIA RTX680 GPU that I added a few weeks back to allow me to upgrade to Mojave. I tried accessing the NVIDIA Preferences (both Web Driver and CUDA) via System Preferences and they wouldn't launch. Thinking that somehow the NVIDIA Driver files were corrupted I tried reloading them with no success, and an error msg saying they can't be opened. I was totally baffled by this. I did a browser search of the error msg and had a bunch of "hits" all with recent dates. I reinstalled the ATI Radeon HD5770 (OEM GPU) to see what would happen and everything was back to normal, no multiple icon/file "ghosting" and all system functions appear to be back to normal.

So, the long and short of it is, the Certificates for the Drivers have not been updated and/or revoked. NVIDA seems to be blaming Apple but the jury's still out on that one and nobody knows if NVIDIA will find a work around or what. There seems to be some User work around's, but they are over my pay grade and seemingly a bit risky.

I reinstalled the NVIDIA GTX680 and am running it w/o their Drivers and it's working okay. But now that raises the next question of whether I can still update to Mojave using this GPU???

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