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Icons have suddenly changed

A

AdamL

macrumors member
Original poster
Okay, so my friend was hooking up his new iPod Nano to my laptop, and I, against my gut feeling, let him take my Mac Book Pro upstairs with him while I watched tv in his living room. So, I go up to get it because I was leaving and all the default folder icons have changed to the icon that shows up when you connect a usb drive, external hard drive, or a disk image. Also, other folders have changed, like my documents folder is now the Aol AIM icon.

Does anyone know what caused this? And is there any kind of magical way to fix it? lol I'm to lazy to really do anything about it unless there is a quick way. lol
 
Do you have any apps like Candybar installed that would have made it easier for him to change the icons en masse?
 
I'm running OS 10.3.9 and I've encountered this many times. It happens on my machine when the disk starts getting close to being full. Whenever I encounter a "your startup disk is almost full" message, then weird icon picture swaps are almost inevitable. But don't worry, as long as you have lots of free disk space now then the problem will fix itself soon enough. A restart may or may not help speedup this self fixing process.
 
Wow. How much free space do you run around with. Try to keep 5-8GB free for swap files. Having severely low amounts of free space can in some instances result in data loss.
 
mad jew said:
Wow. How much free space do you run around with. Try to keep 5-8GB free for swap files. Having severely low amounts of free space can in some instances result in data loss.
Click to expand...

I've filled up my disk innumerable times, and have operated with less than a couple of gig free on a 60 gig laptop drive for many years, and it's caused no problems whatsoever beyond the temporary icon screw ups. I've experienced no data loss, no more frequent unexpected quits than my other emptier Macs, no more frequent messed up prefs or messed up application databases.

OS X (10.3.9) handles full disks with the most amazing ease and grace, causing no problems at all other than some files temporarily displaying incorrect icons. If you ever need to, feel free to fill up your OS X disks to full capacity without worry. That's been my experience.

I have a feeling that OS X reserves the amount of disk space that it needs to operate correctly, and thus won't allow you to fill up your disk to the point that your data or the computer's functionality would be at risk.
 
mad jew said:
Wow. How much free space do you run around with. Try to keep 5-8GB free for swap files. Having severely low amounts of free space can in some instances result in data loss.
Click to expand...

No one needs 5-8 GB swap files unless they are running PI proccesses.
 
Restart fixed it. I panicked (not exactly) and didn't try anything before I posed here.

By the way I have about 37 GB free on my disk.

Thanks though everyone!
 
rhyndu said:
No one needs 5-8 GB swap files unless they are running PI proccesses.
Click to expand...


I have just restarted thanks to the security update and already have used just over 6GB of virtual memory on a PowerPC machine running Tiger. I'm browsing the 'net, running Mail and iTunes. I stand by my original comment that it's good to keep a nice buffer of about 8GB free, especially since the occasional bug with the ever-expanding log files hasn't yet been solved.
 
mad jew said:
I have just restarted thanks to the security update and already have used just over 6GB of virtual memory on a PowerPC machine running Tiger. I'm browsing the 'net, running Mail and iTunes. I stand by my original comment that it's good to keep a nice buffer of about 8GB free, especially since the occasional bug with the ever-expanding log files hasn't yet been solved.
Click to expand...

Maybe PPC... but seriously... oh wait... browsing... you are using Safari, right?

Use Firefox and I'd love to see what you get for swap usage...
 
This happens with annoying regularity on Panther and less so on Tiger, I haven't seen it happen on Leopard. Even on drives that have plenty of free space...

Far faster than restarting and less disruptive to whatever you're working on is just relaunching Finder from the Force Quit menu; fixes it straight away. 🙂
 
Blue Velvet said:
Far faster than restarting and less disruptive to whatever you're working on is just relaunching Finder from the Force Quit menu; fixes it straight away. 🙂
Click to expand...
Or just add a Quit Finder menu item, using Tinkertool or type defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool yes in Terminal:

Picture 1.jpg

😉
 
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