Lion Keeps Re-arranging my Folders

I have not had problems since 10.7.2, except for the root of the hard drive where I deleted the .DS_Store and it never came back (because my user doesn't have permission to write there). But I have now copied one from backup and changed the ownership, and it appears to work.

I read that thread, and it does make sense, but I think the problem is actually simpler. At the command line if you do 'ls -la' in a driectory you will notice that each file has permissions (reflecting those for owner, group, everyone), followed by the owner of the file and the group it belongs to.

I've noticed that the group has been all over, "admin" "staff" and "wheel." One or all of these corresponds to the Administrators group. I suspect that they changed the Admin group in 10.7, so suddenly the process that wrotes the .DS_store was locked out. They may have fixed this in 10.7.2. If that's the case, it's not that you don't own these files, but that the group that would allow you to write does not match. The likely proper fix (which may have happened) was to change the Admin group associated with the userid, not change permissions on the whole drive.

In a reply to myself: "My desktop icon problem (decribed on page 7) still persists in 10.7.2."

It happened only once. The icons have, after re-bootings, stayed put since.

This problem (not much of a problem really, just annoying) still persists:

If I use the shortcut command-J in the finder and try to adjust the icon size, all icons closer than about 100pixels to the left border jumps to the right and wont come back. It doesn't matter if I reduce the size or increase it. These icons still end up on the right side. All the other icons stay put.

Has anyone had any lingering rearrangement problems since upgrading to 10.7.2?

Specifically:

Are the placement of icons maintaining their place and size within folders viewed in icon view?

Are the placement of icons maintaining their place and size on the desktop?

Are the finder windows maintaining their size?

My partner who organizes everything using icon mode in project based clusters of icons. I finally convinced him to make the switch to 10.7 from 10.4 when his iMac G5 started to die. We got him the latest (2011) Mac Mini with Lion. When his workflow was being shaken up by the Lion rearrangement, I partitioned his hard drive and downgraded him to 10.6.8 in order to wait for the fix. Apparently the fix came in 10.7.2. We are hesitating on upgrading. I told him that I will wait for any comments from the boards.

So, are you still having problems?

MathGeekRob wrote:

Has anyone had any lingering rearrangement problems since upgrading to 10.7.2?

10.7.2 completely fixed it for me. Zero problems now...

For me, there is good news and bad news. The icon locations in icon view no longer move around. That was the most serious problem. Unfortunately, Finder still does not honor the "Always open in..." settings. Saving images frequently leaves windows in list view when the "Always open in icon view" is set.

I can confirm this same behavior. The problem is fixed but on occasion windows change views. At least changing them back finds all the icons in the same order. It hasn't been a huge annoyance. If anything it triggers a little PTSD, "Oh no! My meticulous rearrangment! Not again!" 🙂

So far 10.7.2 seems to have solved the problem for me. Icon arrangements are again rock-solid.

Whew!

It is _possible_ that occasionally, I've needed to update the "Always open in..." setting because it has been forgotten. I really haven't taken the time to keep track.

Sorry, not rock-solid

Lion loses the "Always open in icon view." setting everytime I use a non-icon view to search for a file in Mail/Attach (which, for me, can be as many as ten times a day)

As others have said, this is not a big deal -- the fix is fast and simple -- but it does indicate that implementation of view options is still not bug-free.

Janet

Still not happy even if 10.7.2 is clearly better. I cannot keep background color, cannot keep always the same view, cannot get my favorite sorting... The Lion's Finder do what HE want, not what I want, it's a shame !

Interesting.

I have had no problems losing background color -- once I flip back to icon view, all my backgrounds, positionings, etc. are correct.

Can you identify what specific activity causes your system to lose the view parameters?

I'm replying to the OP:

Same here (or similar). This is one of the 30 reasons why I simply cannot adopt Lion as my main OS. No matter how many times I reset my Finder prefs, Lion constantly puts my desktop items in the wrong place, or fails completely to organise them. Having to do it myself 100 times a day is a royal PITA.

Sorry to hear you are still having issues.

Hmmm... What I've experienced and read, plus your observations, suggest:

1) View Options settings take effect and seem to "stick" because they are kept inside the Finder for some period of time.

2) That search operation from Mail causes the Finder to try to store the View Options in a special file -- a normally invisible one called ".DS_Store" associated that particular folder. That's the place View Options are kept long-term.

3) You have a permissions problem preventing you from updating that file. I believe I've heard --and observed myself-- that the process of updating to 10.7 sometimes causes such problems.

If this seems like tekkie-babble to you, I apologize. I'm thinking out loud about a way of explaining what's happening in your case. And I'm struggling to figure out a way you can test this theory.

Hmmmm... if this happens with respect to a particular folder, but not in other cases, that would support an "update-caused permissions problem", because as far as I know that issue occurs randomly and rarely. If this issue occurs for every folder you test --including new ones you create for testing-- consistently, then... D'oh, I have no idea what's going on.

Take a look and post back. Does this issue occur with every folder, including new ones? Or just isolated folders, ones that existed before you updated to 10.7?

HTH

Tom in London wrote:

No matter how many times I reset my Finder prefs, Lion constantly puts my desktop items in the wrong place, or fails completely to organise them.

Maybe a corrupt .DS_Store file. Have you tried deleting the .DS_Store files from your Home folder and Desktop folder?

For Henry:

the problem has zero to do with which folder I'm in and everything to do with what operation I'm performing

and

it's totally consistent, not random.

In Mail, everytime I switch to column view in order to search for a file I wish to attach to an email and then select the Finder button, my folder shows up in column view. I clcik icon view and all is restored. Finder continues to behave correctly until I perform another attach.

For Tom:

You are discribing what we all experienced with 10.7.0 and 10.7.1

10.7.2 corrected nearly much of the problem only a few small bugs remain

Hen3ry wrote:

It is _possible_ that occasionally, I've needed to update the "Always open in..." setting because it has been forgotten. I really haven't taken the time to keep track.

Same here. I think Snow Leopard did this too. Hopefully fixed in a future update.