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Finder windows don't retain settings!!

I don't usually switch to a new OS right away – and now I know why. Lots of teething problems with Mountain Lion. (Kinda had to upgrade early this time - new MBA for my daughter who is on a mission to fight Hunger in Africa and wanted to be able to assist her setting-up her MBA…)


OK there is much to love about Mountain Lion, including dictation which is how I am writing this post.


The big problem I'm having right now is that my finder windows change upon start up. My main finder window when I open my hard drive has 30 icons. I have this set for the snap-to grid-mode and I have a picture as the background for this finder window.


User uploaded file


You can see that this is quite colorful, easy to recognize and has some personalized icons that go back to Mac OS 6.0.4.


But when I restart my Mac (fortunately only a couple times a week) the picture is gone and the icons are all on a white background in alphabetical order. For some 20 years I've used a main window, a main finder window as an easy and friendly way to recognize and organize things. Now every time I start up I have to spend five minutes rearranging the icons and resetting this. I heard there was a similar bug in lion 10.7.1 or 10.7.2.


(And yes I built that 6 foot tall, 4 inch diameter rocket and launched it to 800 meters altitude, safely recovered, in 2009).


Is anyone having this problem? If not could you try to load an image and set for snap to grid and restart your Mac to see if this problem is an OS problem or conflict with another program? I use CopyPaste Pro, DragThing, TextExpander, aLaunch, StockMenulet, Free Memory, MenuCalendarClock and a host of other shareware / App Store programs -- but I have used all these programs for the last 2 to 5 years and never, repeat never had this window missing artwork and re-organization problem.


This dictation via Mountain Lion is great! (But see my other post – the missing cursor problem is another one that is bugging me…)


Thanks very much.


Steve

MacOnly since 1989

Thursday 2 August 2012

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, Also a Mac SE running 6.0.4 - not upgrading that!

Posted on Aug 2, 2012 4:49 AM

Reply
56 replies

Dec 3, 2012 2:41 AM in response to IdeaSandbox

Even with Mountain lion 10.8.2 I continued to have windows problems. The icon size changes from for example 100 to 36. The colored or picture background windows change to all-white. Windows set to sort by name have gone to no sorting none.


What is wrong? I have never had this starting with Mac OS 6.0.4 in the year 1989 right through to and including 10.7 Lion. Now this horrible problem with Mountain lion.


Are there any others out there experiencing these problems? If not would you try to set some windows for color and picture backgrounds, restart a few times and move around the windows to see if there is a problem.


Thank!


Steve

Dec 14, 2012 7:03 PM in response to Stephen Schulte1

I was really expecting a lot more response to this discussion. Perhaps there are not many of you personalizing your windows with specific settings like icon size, icon spacing, colors or pictures especially pictures for the window itself.


Essentially every time I restart my Mac (fortunately only once or twice a week) my main window which has an image and snap to grid spacing has gone to no picture background, much larger icon size and sorted by name. Worse, in order to read set the window I have to take about five minutes to manually reset all the icons.


I will re-contact Apple concerning this major bug but would certainly appreciate some of you out there trying to duplicate this situation, that is, setting a picture / image in the window and setting snap to grid and setting 60 x 60 icon size and doing one or more restarts and checking the icon view.


Thanks in advance for any feedback.


Best regards,


Steve

Dec 15, 2012 7:29 AM in response to Stephen Schulte1

I spoke with Apple support some time ago and the only thing we could point to was that the folder affected is one I'm using with Dropbox... and (these are my words) Dropbox may not respect the hidden files that control preferences.


My problem is that icon size changes and I lose my custom icons. I've been using Dropbox for quite a while and this is a relatively new situation... either something new in the OS or something different in the way Dropbox work.

Dec 15, 2012 10:27 AM in response to Djim's

I also do not have any problems with the dropbox folder. But I can have problems with really any folder and almost any time.


I see this most in the main folder for my hard drive which is illustrated in my initial post. I reduced the number of main icons on that folder to 25 just to make it easier to arrange it after a startup when ML scatters them everywhere.


I use Sugarsync almost constantly and turn on dropbox now and then. I also use totalfinder but I have never been able to link it to any of these three programs. Indeed I once turned off totalfinder for two weeks and had exactly the same problems.


Again I think most people don't experience this because they don't make special folders with images, colors, specific sizes of icons or other things.


I shall update my Apple Bug report and then report back here later this year or early January.


Steve

15 December 2012

Jan 10, 2013 4:26 AM in response to Lanny

Thanks for your suggestion, but I did as you suggested, quit Dropbox, restarted and then 2 days later shut down my MBP and restarted--- and the FINDER icon view was mixed-up just as before:

  • Icon size went from 60x60 to 100x100.
  • Window picture background that I had set was gone - replaced by white
  • Sort by snap-to-grid was gone, replaced by "none"
  • All icons were in a random pattern, not like I had set them


I don't understand why this is happening still.


I believe other people are not experiencing this because a great number of Mac users (in my opinion) do not modify their max the way I do. That is they are content to have a window which has no color or no background image and they don't really care in what order their icons appear. Now I am not saying everyone and perhaps 50 or 60% of Mac users are rather pedantic about how their windows appear but I am saying that I don't believe they use all the features images and settings that I'm using. Thus they are not having the problems that I am having. Or they are not reporting them here!


More bug reports to file it seems!


Best regards,



Steve Schulte

Thursday 10 January 2013

Jan 14, 2013 6:37 PM in response to Stephen Schulte1

I'm suffering from this also, Mountain Lion can't remember Finder window settings. I prefer to view most folders by icon, and I use a lot of custom icons. The reason is the nature of my work: a project can have many files, and many are not created or named by me. The only easy way to organize them is to keep a lot of folders in a well organ ized hierarchy. Searhcing won't suffice because I can't remember the name or content of a file form 8 years ago, but I can quickly find it by navigating through the hierarchy.


If you don't know: a folder's Finder settings are stored in the folder in a hidden file named .DS_Store.


I've tried locking the .DS-Store files, Mountain Lion will stil display the wrong settings. The "wrongness" propagates to sub-folders also.


I haven't been able to determine any pattern in this. It has been one of the major impediments to me getting work done.


I've seriously considered "upgrading" from Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard...

Jan 14, 2013 6:47 PM in response to cyborgsam

Thanks for your comments and details. This has been among the most frustrating things about mountain lion. Every other restart I have to rearrange all my icons on that very first page! Again I had to do it today.


Repeatedly I will go to a window and icons which I had set for 144 x 144 are at 32 x 32. Why is this?


Sort order, window background, color, icon size… All changed almost all the time.


Later today I will go and update my bug report. Please file a bug report with Apple.


Best regards,


Steve

January 15, 2013

Jan 14, 2013 6:57 PM in response to Stephen Schulte1

It sounds to me like the Finder preference file that stores your settings is corrupt or contains conflicting information (possibly due to multiple upgrades over the years). I'd recommend you reset it to default and then set up your prefs from scratch. Hopefully after that they will "stick" as they say.


The following procedure deletes the current Finder preferences file, and re-creates a fresh 'default' one. Follow the procedure below and then set up your Finder windows as you wish.


1. Open Terminal.app, and copy and paste this command into the window:


rm ~/Library/Preferences/finder.plist


press 'return' on your keyboard.


2. Restart your mac (you must do this to recreate the preference list file).


3. Now make the changes to the Finder window that you want.


4. Restart your mac again to see if they 'stick'.

Finder windows don't retain settings!!

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