Why do my desktop icons rearrange themselves every time I reboot?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Why do my desktop icons rearrange themselves every time I reboot?

I've had this machine for three years now. In the past, whenever I shut down or rebooted, at startup my desktop icons loaded where they were when I shutdown or rebooted. Now???? all of a sudden every time I shutdown or reboot, the icons are located (randomly as far as I can tell) in neat columns on the righthand side of the screen. We have two iMacs here and every check box we can find are checked the same on each machine. The icons on the second iMac to not rearrange upon shutdown or reboot.

How do I save, desktop icon position?

iMac iMac7,1, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 20, 2011 6:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

captfred

Level 7

26,422 points

Feb 20, 2011 7:23 AM in response to keygooo

Click on an unused area of the desktop, right click (or CNTL-click), set Arrange by "none" at the bottom of the resulting screen.

Regards

Reply

Answer 2

keygooo Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2011 7:56 AM in response to captfred

Thanks for your quick response, but the setting you refer to is set to none. When I first went to discussion groups this morning I followed a tip I found there. It was the same as you recommend. When I got to that screen it was already set to none and so then I couldn't figure out anything else to try. One cool thing....I see you registered on my 69th birthday!

Reply

Answer 3

captfred

Level 7

26,422 points

Feb 20, 2011 9:20 AM in response to keygooo

I must have gotten a problematic tv for your birthday! 🙂

Back to your problem. I did a search and for those that have "none" already set, there doesn't seem to be a definitive solution. I'll keep an eye out for something better.

Regards

Reply

Answer 4

keygooo Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2011 11:02 AM in response to keygooo

Thanks for your response. What I really don't understand, is how, after three years of use with no icon location issue, can it all of a sudden start doing this weird thing? Until today, I did not even know there was a way to change how desktop icons are displayed, so it is not something I have ever monkeyed with. One other comment. When I right click on a blank area the desktop and arrow over Arrange By...."none" is not an option and none of the options have a check mark by them. I have to click on Show View Options to get to a drop down box that has "none" as an option.

Reply

Answer 5

Hope99k

Level 1

0 points

Mar 5, 2011 6:47 AM in response to keygooo

Mine just started doing the same thing out of the blue! For no apparent reason. There is no "none" to be found in the "arrange by" menu, just in the "show view options" tab, which is set to "none."
I haven't changed the settings or anything.

Reply

Answer 6

LLL7

Level 1

9 points

Mar 5, 2011 12:46 PM in response to Hope99k

My computer has done this from day one. I finally called Apple Care and still have not been able to resolve this issue.

Reply

Answer 7

sgginc

Level 3

676 points

Mar 5, 2011 1:51 PM in response to keygooo

Just a stab:

Open your Preferences folder in your user account.
View as list.
Choose Date Modified as the sort column.
Change the view option for your desktop.
See if a preference (.plist) moves to the top.
If so move it to your desktop.
Change view to none again.

Also try the Preferences on the HD/System/Library
Check the permissions on the Preference.
Make all read/write

Hope this works.

Thanks ... Ken

Reply

Answer 8

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Mar 5, 2011 2:17 PM in response to keygooo

Jumping in, but it might be a hosed, hidden .DS_Store file in your Desktop folder. Launch the Terminal app, copy & paste this command into the window that pops up, quit the Terminal app, restart, rearrange your Desktop icons, log out, and back in. That should do the trick.

*rm ~/Desktop/.DS_Store*

Reply

Answer 9

LLL7

Level 1

9 points

Mar 13, 2011 9:07 AM in response to baltwo

Just to give you an update, I have spent the better part of last week on the phone with apple trying to get this resolved. We could not get the DS_store command to work, even with sudo. Hope you understand that, I don't get into terminal ever! We trashed preferences and created new accounts (which did solve the problem for a little while-one start up.) Anyway this issue has been elevated through apple and there is a team working on it. I will let you know what happens.

Reply

Answer 10

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Mar 13, 2011 11:19 AM in response to LLL7

Thanks for the feedback. Interesting that the Terminal command didn't work. One way to do it would be to create a new account, log into it, and use it with sudo on the other account.

*sudo rm /Users/"name of borked account"/Desktop/.DS_Store*

Reply

Answer 11

Kylaros

Level 1

9 points

Mar 21, 2011 8:24 AM in response to LLL7

Same issue here. Just started to have this problem within the past month.I haven't tried any of the proposed "fixes" as yet.... I might try that this afternoon.

I'll keep an eye on this thread for further developments on this issue in case anyone hears anything from apple.

Reply

Answer 12

Cyberdog

Level 1

8 points

Apr 25, 2011 12:32 PM in response to keygooo

I also have had the exact same problem for the past year or so. My icons stay where I put them for a month or so and then suddenly they're rearranged all bunched up in lines on the right side of the screen. Extremely irritating, since I have them arranged spacially in groups.

My only clue is that it seems like this tends to happen after system updates – but I'm not completely sure that it is a 100% correlation.

I'd really appreciate a resolution to this decidedly "unmacintoshlike" way of working.

Reply

Answer 13

irob_swe

Level 1

5 points

Jan 21, 2015 5:52 AM in response to keygooo

Awesome thread, Cyberdog and Clarus are discussing confusing icons.

Reply