How can I make 'Columns View' default?

O

owen-b

Registered
Hi all,

Possibly a silly question but it's got me stumped. Whenever I restart or turn on afresh my iBook (600mhz, 640ram, G3, OS 10.3.9) and double click on the hard drive, it opens in Icon view by default, and they're all scattered around, not in any order. It never used to do this. It always used to open in the columns view.

A Mac guru at work said to select the columns view, then close the window, and then when you re-open it, columns will be default, and that works until I restart the Mac.

How do I HARD set it to columns by default? And what have I done to select 'messy icons' by default??
Cheers!
Owen
 
This is going so easy you are going to slap your forehead in disgust. Just go to the Finder's Preferences (from the Finder Menu) and put a check mark in "open new windows in column view". To clean up icon spreading in Finder Windows and on the Desktop, just go the the Finder menu item "View" and select "Show View Options" and select to "snap to a grid" (along with some other View settings).
 
Cheers mate, but here's the thing: I just checked that, and it was already selected!

I know how to clean up icons etc, but this is why I'm so confused as to why everytime the computer has loaded up lately, the main harddrive window has opened with icons, scattered around.

Has something possibly got corrupted somewhere and is there a simple 'rebuilding' operation I need to do to iron the problem out?

Cheers satcomer, more advice welcome!

Owen
 
I think I may have a solution. I think you may have a corrupt Finder preference file. Just mosey (yes I am an American) over to users->Your user account->Library->Preferences-> and find the item " com.apple.finder.plist". Just trash that item then log out and them log back in. Once back in go to the finder's Preference again and select the column view options again.
 
Cheers again mate, but to no avail. I deleted said prefs file, logged out, logged back in, immediately went to the Finder preferences and clicked the box, opened up the hard drive window and LO! Icon view again.

Selected column view, closed the window, reopened it, and it was still column view. Logged out, logged back in, and back to Icon view.

Is there something else somewhere that's overriding it? Another prefs file that's corrputed perhaps? A selection somewhere that needs to be unselected??

Owen
 
Okay - what is repairing permissions? How do I do it, what does it do?

And what is Cocktail, what are DS_Store files, and what does deleting them achieve?

Cheers folks!
Owen
 
Permissions

To Repair Permissions, use Disk Utility in your Utility folder.
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The .DS_Store files are created by the Finder during its normal course of operation but they are invisible by default. The Finder will automatically put a .DS_Store file into every folder you have opened. These files are used to save the positions of icons, the size of the respective Finder window, the window's background, and many more view options.

===========================

Cocktail Product Description:
Cocktail is a general purpose utility for Mac OS X. The application simplifies the use of advanced UNIX functions, gives access to hidden Mac OS X settings and let you easily optimize your system. It is a smooth, powerful and simple to use utility with all major features arranged in five basic categories and a Pilot that lets you clean, repair and optimize your system with one click of the button.
 
1) Repairing Permissions: This is done by disk Utility. This Apple application is in Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility. To Repair Permissions (in Disk Utility) just highlight your startup drive and select "Repairing Permissions". what this is doing is repair permissions that application installers routinely mess up OS X permissions. Apple included this function so a user can reset the permission to the way they should be so OS X can run properly.

2) DS_Store are invisible files that OS X uses to hold individual preferences for different Finder windows. to can see these files by downloading a free program called Tinkertool. With that program one can view invisible files and then make those files invisible again. Along with doing that, the program is like an extra new set of not OS X included Finder preferences.
 
Thanks folks! Used Cocktail to delete the DS files and I'm back to normal now!

Now then, can anyone help me with the problem I'm also experiencing here:
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=229661

It's most perplexing. Where I'm sitting right now, my iBook has full reception, but my partner's Powerbook has NONE at all (in a room next door to where the router is). Anyway, cheers and hope to be of help myself one day.

Owen
 
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