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TICKET ARCHIVE -> No Access to Desktop

seancollier - Jul 26, 2005 - 1:26 pm

HI have just recently run into a problem with not being able to access any icons on my desktop. I can highlight the icon but double clicking doesnt do anything.

Additionally I cant access anything through the finder. When I go to my Applications folder to try and open it the finder never returns anything. I can boot from the Tiger disc but not from any other bootable disk like TechTools or similar.

When I ran utilities from the Tiger disk I tried to repair and it would not complete the disk repair.

I am truely at a standstill here and I am considering just wiping and reinstalling which I would really hate to do.

Any help appreciated.

philippe99 - Jul 26, 2005 - 1:36 pm

Sean, welcome on mac osx.com

Could you go in
~/Library/Preferences (~means your home directory) and move to the desktop the following files:

* com.apple.finder.plist: the primary Finder preferences.
* com.apple.sidebarlists.plist : the Finder Sidebar preferences for those using Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or later.

relaunch the finder.
Does this help ?

When you say "it would not complete the disk repair", do you have an error message ? Does it simply hangs ?

Regards
Philippe

seancollier - Jul 26, 2005 - 2:31 pm

Luckily I had my terminal launcher available from the dock so I was able to go in via command line and move those 2 files to my desktop. I relaunched the finder but nothing changed. I cant open any of hte icons on my desktop or through the finder go to any graphical file browser.

I did run an fsck -f command from a command+S at startup. Everything seems to be fine now with the extents. I reran the disk utilities and it tells me there is nothing to repair. So from a disk perspective all seems to be fine but I still cant access any file browser or deskop icons.

philippe99 - Jul 26, 2005 - 2:37 pm

Sean, could you create a new account on your machine and enter it.
Still Finder problems ?

Philippe

seancollier - Jul 26, 2005 - 2:43 pm

I created a brand new account and I am getting the same symptoms. I can not access anything through the finder.

Any other ideas?

-Sean

philippe99 - Jul 26, 2005 - 2:58 pm

Ok last hope before going to wipe & re-install

You run Tiger, rigth ?
Download the 10.4.2 Combo through your browser -not the update Apple tool- and install it over your existing Tiger 10.4.x.

Make the test again.

Post back
Philippe

seancollier - Jul 26, 2005 - 3:22 pm

I did download it bu the system says that it can not mount the file. I guess I am at a dead end here.

Thanks
Sean

philippe99 - Jul 26, 2005 - 3:35 pm

I think so, unfortunately: end of track.

The best way to backup your important files (except using the terminal, tar,..and so), is to connect your mac to another machine, and boot your Mac in target mode: your mac internal drive will be see as a simple drive for the other mac
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

I must confess, Sean, I never had heard about such a problem like your and I feel quite bit upset not have, with your help, found a suitable solution except the last one: like you, I hate so much reinstalling a bunch of software for, I guess, a single corrupted file sowhere in the cave of the Unix layer.

However, I really appreciate all the tests you accept to perform and the answer you quickly prompt me back.

Good luck with the re-install process.
And thank you for using macosx.com

Regards
Philippe

seancollier - Jul 28, 2005 - 5:28 pm

Phillipe,

Thanks for your help. I did do a reinstall and it seemed to clear things up.

I appreciate your help.

-Sean

philippe99 - Jul 29, 2005 - 2:41 am

Sean, happy to hear you solve the problem.
I sincerely would like to find a solution, since re-install a soft is an extreme by-pass for me
Regards
Philippe