10.5.2 made my desktop icons disappear - help!

[dkeninitz]

I installed the 10.5.2 update on my PowerMac G5. Everything seems to work fine, except that my desktop icons have disappeared and I open any windows in Finder. When I boot, my dock comes up normally. The various system icons appear in the top right corner but on on a transparent, but I don't have a Finder bar at the top of the screen. If I open an application, I get a bar and everything works normally. In the dock, the greyed "Application Not Responding" message is visible when I right-click on the Finder icon; if I click relaunch, nothing happens.

I've repaired my permissions using Cocktail (since I can't navigate to Disk Utility), I've rebuilt my launch database and run all the scripts also using Cocktail, and then rebooted multiple times.

I tried downloading the standalone update (353mb) thinking I'd try to reinstall the update, and it obviously downloaded, but I have no way to get it to run (that I know of) since it isn't visible on the desktop. I can see it though by "tricking" the Finder into showing it by going into Accounts in System Preferences and clicking the Add button for Log-In preferences. That gets me to a dialog box/window where I can see all my drives and desktop folders just fine, and the updater file (dmg) is there as well.

Any ideas are appreciated.

 

[secondcup]

Same Problem Here

Hi Don,

What you described is EXACTLY what I am experiencing on my Powerbook 1.25ghz. I did the same steps you did to no avail. I was thinking 10.5.2 needs more RAM? I've only got 256MB.

Steve

 

[dkeninitz]

Hi Don,

What you described is EXACTLY what I am experiencing on my Powerbook 1.25ghz. I did the same steps you did to no avail. I was thinking 10.5.2 needs more RAM? I've only got 256MB.

Steve

Steve,

I don't think it's a RAM issue: I've got 4GB in my PowerMac. I'm probably going to try and reinstall by starting from my install disk and then seeing if I can't to the standalone update file and run it.

Don

 

[igoggsy]

same here - running a macbook core 2 duo. interesting bug, i have all my music on a network drive that needs to mount when i startup....it doesn't show up, but the files play in itunes so clearly it has mounted.

 

[dkeninitz]

same here - running a macbook core 2 duo. interesting bug, i have all my music on a network drive that needs to mount when i startup....it doesn't show up, but the files play in itunes so clearly it has mounted.

Yeah, it's clear that all my drives mount, I just can't see them or get to them. What happened to the days when Mac OS X updates used to be seamless? I switched to Macs when OS X first came out, and had gone through every upgrade (owning as many as six machines at any given point) without the slightest hiccup until Leopard. The original Leopard install on my PowerMac was a disaster that took me two days to fix (the gray screen of death), though it installed fine on the family's various MacBooks and MBP's.

 

[dkeninitz]

Well, I spent an hour on the phone with Apple tech support (if it can be called that), to no avail. First the lady went through all the scripted responses: reboot (as if hadn't done that 30 - 40 times since I installed 10.5.2 yesterday), repair disk permissions (I'd already done it three times), and so on. By the end of the hour it was obvious she was clueless: she ended up telling me to do an archive & install.

I did the archive & install, and everything was back to normal. Then I ran system update, which generated the 383mb "combo" update since it detected Leopard 10.5.0. As soon as the install was completed, I was back to a desktop with no icons, and a malfunctioning Finder.

It seems clear that the problem is that Finder is not completely loading. All desktop icons are gone, and the Finder icon in the dock shows the grey "application not responding" on the pop-up menu when I right-click on it. I can identify things in Spotlight, but when I click on them nothing happens. There's no Finder menu bar at the top of my screen (the only way I can get a menu bar is to open an application; I have to do this whenever I want to restart). Apart from this, everything works normally. Clearly a software bug, and one Apple hasn't a clue about.

This is enough to make me go back to Windows. It's been five years, but Vista can't be much worse than this. One of the main reasons I switched to all Macs is because of problems like this when upgrading Windows.

 

[texasmsh]

same problem here, too

Upgrading PB G4 from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, I lost all my desktop icons, too. Several hours at Apple store and even more time on phone with three different apple techs --no solution. I've now been waiting to hear from an Apple engineer after being escalated from a tier-2 tech, but no word yet. Downgrading to 10.4.1 works fine. Interestingly, I cant repair permissions on either OS version. I've run sudo maintenance, too--no effect. At least it's a bit of a relief to hear that I' m not the only one with this problem.

 

[igoggsy]

ok - i figured out my issue. i use a ximeta netdisk and it appears the driver is incompatible. went back to last version and all is good. hope this helps some of you. i have seen that some external drives are causing problems in 10.5.2

 

[dkeninitz]

ok - i figured out my issue. i use a ximeta netdisk and it appears the driver is incompatible. went back to last version and all is good. hope this helps some of you. i have seen that some external drives are causing problems in 10.5.2

I have two external drives - a Lacie firewire drive and a Maxtor USB drive. I'm thinking about giving the update one last try (I must be crazy, since it took me two days to successfully get back to 10.5.1), by disconnecting the drives with the power off before updating.

Is that what you did? Are you saying you're now using 10.5.2?

 

[Dickison]

Desktop icons disappeared

I had the same problem. I fixed it by installing TINKERTOOL (FREE) and unchecking the DISABLE DESKTOP FEATURES

 

[tryiian]

I had the same problem. I fixed it by installing TINKERTOOL (FREE) and unchecking the DISABLE DESKTOP FEATURES

I just wanna say that this post saved the day for me and likely, many other people who have been googling this issue. I cant imagine what maintenance script or disk repair function I did that might`ve caused TT to disable the desktop but I`m certain I didnt set it to do so. There were a few other things wrong in there that I wouldnt have set up. Perhaps the feature wasnt enabled by tinkertool itself but TT was able to disable it, regardless of how it happened in the first place.

So anyway, again, thanks!