Why can't I get anything to save to or mount on my desktop?

Go to Finder -> Preferences, click the General icon and make sure anything you want to show on the desktop is checked.

Try deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist (where '~' means "your user folder"), restarting and then see what happens.

I can mount to the desktop but can no longer save anything to it.
In fact every time I reboot I get 2 images there that shouldn't be there and which I can't get rid of.

I've run Disk Utility with 'Repair Disk Permissions' several times and whilst it has to repair many permissions every time I still have these 2 images hanging around on the desktop but am still unable to save anything to the desktop.

I'm thinking that this wasn't a problem before upgrading to 10.6.7 but couldn't be sure.

Any ideas?

Simon

Some additional info...

If I go to Finder and try to copy a file from my Documents folder to my Desktop folder I get the error message: "You can put items into Desktop but you won't be able to see them, Do you want to continue? Other users with sufficient permissions will be able to use the items".

This is unusual as I used to be able to see things on the desktop and I'm the administrator.

If you right-click on the Desktop folder in your user folder does it show your user account by it's short name and that your user has Read & Write permissions?

If I right-click on the Desktop folder in my user folder, and then click on 'Get Info' and then click on the twistie for 'Sharing & Permissions' then my short name is listed but... I have 'Write only (Drop Box)' privilege and not 'Read & Write'!

So could it simply be a question of changing this to 'Read & Write'?

Yes, that's how mine are set. If you don't have Read priv's you aren't allowed to see inside the folder, and in this case, the folder is your desktop.

That's worked - thanks dechamp. I can now save files to the desktop although I don't know why the permissions got changed.

I still have an issue with two image files being visible on the desktop that I'm unable to turn off or delete but I will search this out separately in a different discussion thread.