I accidentally deleted my DESKTOP

I just read the dialogue from your post regarding 'I accidentally deleted my desktop'.
I am having the same problem.
did you ever figure out the problem?

I would appreciate any feedback you have to offer.

Open your home folder and see if the Desktop folder is still there and if your files are still in it. Do a GetInfo on the Desktop folder and see if the Locked bit has been set. If it has, then uncheck the locked box. Also expand the GetInfo section at the bottom and look to make sure you are still the owner with Read&Write permissions.

Dragging something into and then out of the Finder window toolbar should have no effect whatsoever: if you drag an item into the toolbar a kind of alias is created there, when you Command drag an item off the toolbar the alias should simply disappear in a puff of smoke. Neither of those actions would have any effect on the original item.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

I'm afraid I really don't understand what you did, nor what the situation is now. When you say you did a Spotlight search and "it shows the old desktop icon" what does that mean? There is just a Desktop icon which is applied to the folder Desktop that is in your home folder. If you type this into Spotlight:

Desktop kind:folder

Do you see the Desktop icon? If you hold down the Command key and click on it, what happens?

If you open a program you were using that has one of the items that you had on your Desktop, and you go to Recent Items and select the file, does the file open?

Have you looked in your Trash? Is anything in there?

Finally, two pieces of advice: keep a current backup of all your own files on another drive (preferably a drive that is big enough to allow you clone your entire startup drive, and that you can boot from), and do not keep a bunch of stuff on your Desktop. Save things to appropriate folders inside your home folder.

Sorry I can't be of more help, but from what you've said I can't imagine exactly what you did, nor what state things are in now.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

It sounds more like you've lost the correct permissions to your own desktop. Open the startup hard drive and then the Users folder. Double click your user account. You should see a folder named Desktop. That is your current desktop as you see it on the screen. If you open that, you would also see the same files that are on your desktop if there were any.

You may indeed have deleted your original Desktop folder. It's not easy to do since the system will try and stop you, but it's not impossible either. Since the Mac will not allow the system to operate without a Desktop folder in the active user account, it will immediately create a new one if the previous folder is somehow lost. Which is where it sounds like you are.

Open Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Select your startup disk in the left pane and click "Repair Disk Permissions". See if you can then access your Desktop.

I tried going to the Users folder, but there was no folder named Desktop in my user account....I don't think that the Mac has created a new Desktop folder yet. Is a restart necessary for it to create it?

Yes, that will give you a new Desktop folder in your account. Kind of surprised the OS didn't do that already. But that should solve the problem, other than losing whatever files and folders were residing on the previous Desktop.

Is there any data from your Desktop folder which you deleted you wish to try to recover?

Might you have backed up the data earlier by cloning your hard drive?

Works perfectly. Thanks guys!