Resolved Almost impossible to attach files

A friend of mine is having an issue with his MacBook Air mid-2013. He is using OS X Mavericks 10.9.4.

Whenever he tries to attach a file either within facebook, wetransfer, gmail etc from the Documents-folder, everything messes up. It gets impossible to choose a file, because almost none of them are showing up the way it should. (See attached image). #theirony

As he does that, it sort of affects all the other folders as well. Suddenly the Desktop-folder contains all the files that Downloads has. Everything gets messed up, before his desktop fills up with loads of vlc.dmg which I guess is something he has in his Downloads-folder (?). I have attached a screenshot so you can see what happens. A couple of seconds later, whatever program he is using to upload, hangs and then the spinning rainbow-wheel shows up, and never goes away.

This is getting really frustrating for him, as the university he attends is starting this week. He is going to install a whole loads of program, so he is wondering about doing a full reinstall of OS X? Has someone else encountered this type of issue?

I am Norwegian, so there is probably some weird errors in the post. Sorry about that.

Weaselboy said:

Your friend has a misunderstanding about how to install applications on his Mac. It looks like he has downloaded different versions of VLC and Silverlight then left open the DMG installer file for each one. That is what all those white icons are on the desktop.

Have him get the latest version of VLC 2.1.5 from this link. Then have him double click the vlc-2.1.5.dmg file and he will get this window.

Image

Now drag the VLC app itself (the orange cone) into the Applications shortcut on the same window. That takes care of the VLC installation.

Now have him open Finder and look at the lower left where I marked with an arrow. That shows a DMG file open and "mounted" on the Desktop. Have him go through and click that little arrow next to each one and it will unmount the DMG and the white icon on the Desktop will go away. Have him go down the whole list and do that for every entry like that with an eject arrow next to it like in my screenshot.

Image

That should get rid of all those white icons on the Desktop and make the file selection screen less cluttered.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your help! It apparently worked