Q: Desktop ICONs rearrange after reboot, 1st on Snow Leopard and continues on Mavericks updated to on 3/29/2014 why?

Are the icons rearranged randomly, or do they always revert to the same arrangement? If you change the view options for the Desktop, do the changes stick after a reboot?

Back up all data.

This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.

Step 1

If you have more than one user, and the one in question is not an administrator, then go to Step 2.

Triple-click anywhere in the following line on this page to select it:

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_; chmod -R -N ~ $_; } 2>&-

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.

You'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command may take a few minutes to run, or perhaps longer if you have literally millions of files in your home folder. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1, if it frightens you, or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.

In the Terminal window, type this:

res

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password dialog will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

In the dialog, select the startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if it's not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if it's not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select

 ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.

The "resetpassword" command is only available in Recovery mode. If you can't get into Recovery mode, that may be because you don't have a Recovery partition, which is a separate issue. Did you try Step 1?

Go to  Finder > View > Sort By and make sure that 'Snap To Grid' is not checked. I select 'none'.

Pete

Have you trashed the Finder Preferences and rebooted?

Pete

To me this sounds like a problem with the .DS_Store file in the folder (in this case ~/Desktop).

I would try deleting the .DS_Store file.

Of course since .DS_Store is a hidden file, you will need to either use an Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal session

rm -i ~/Desktop/.DS_Store

Being very VERY CAREFUL with the 'rm' (remove) command, as you can easily shoot yourself in the foot with this command.

Now use Apple menu icon -> Force Quit... -> Finder -> Relaunch

This should cause Finder to create a new ~/Desktop/.DS_Store file.

After the Finder Relaunch, did you try moving things around and seeing if they stayed put?

That is to say, after deleting the .DS_Store and allowing a new one to be created, everything would initially be the default Finder behavior.

My theory is that after creating a new .DS_Store any changes you make to that folder, should stick going forward.

Rather than a reboot, a Finder Relaunch would be a quicker way to see if your changes are sticking.

The other possibility is that there is a permissions problem with changing the .DS_Store file.  I would find that strange that you could mess with the files in ~/Desktop, but not be allowed to modify the .DS_Store file.  Not impossible, just highly unlikely.

Message was edited by: BobHarris

It's not clear whether you ever reset the permissions of your home folder, as I suggested earlier.