OS X desktop rebuild equivalent

Mikuro

Crotchety UI Nitpicker
In older versions of OS X, you could accomplish something similar to an OS 9-style desktop rebuild by deleting certain database files — LSApplications, LSClaimedTypes, and LSSchemes, and their associated invisible backups — from your home preferences folder. These would then be rebuilt upon the next login. I originally learned of this at http://www.osxfaq.com/dailytips/08-2002/08-14.ws

I was just having some problems with applications opening as files, so I decided to give this a shot for the first time. But it seems that those files are obsolete in Tiger (and even Panther?). The files I removed from my prefs folder hadn't been modified since 2003, and after logging out, they haven't been recreated.

So....is there any Tiger-compatible equivalent to the Jaguar-compatible equivalent to an OS 9 desktop rebuild? :)

And has anyone else had problems loading applications that have their version number at the end of their name? For example, I was trying to open "FileType 1.0.1", and OS X stupidly considered the ".1" to be a filename extension, so it opened it in ManOpen, which stupidly claimed ownership of all files with numbers as file name extensions (arg!). Finally I just trashed ManOpen, because it caused more problems than it solved, and then my apps started opening in Script Editor — don't ask me why. :confused:

I've managed to get access to FileType by removing the version number from its name, but still, this is bugging me. There are a lot of apps that use that kind of naming style, and it seems ridiculous that OS X should consider them files rather than applications. I never had problems before installing ManOpen, so I assume that if I rebuild/remove the applicable system databases now that I've trashed it, all will return to normal again. But what needs to be rebuilt?
 

elander

Registered
These files have been replaced by "com.apple.LaunchServices.UserCache.##.csstore" in "/Library/Caches/", where ## is a number. There may be several of these (I have three on my system).

You may also want to trash the file "com.apple.LaunchServices.plist" in "~/Library/Preferences" if your problem persists.
 
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