Desktop icons misbehaving

[theBB]

This is strange. All of a sudden many of the icons on my desktop became what looks like white blank pages, as if OSX does not know which app to identify it with. There are a few exceptions, such as "Macintosh HD" or folder icons.

It gets even more bizarre. If I copy the same file into a finder window, it displays the proper colorful icon. If I just move that file from Desktop into a finder window (instead of copying) then it is the same "white blank page" icon.

I copy the "white blank page" icon on Desktop into a finder window, delete the original from desktop and copy that file from finder onto the Desktop, the icon gets displayed fine.

I gotta say this is quite disheartening. I would expect Mac OSX to be more consistent and stable. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? I am using an intel 10.4.5 with all of the security updates.

 

[mad jew]

Have you got any theme changing hacks installed? Dare I say it, maybe try repairing permissions from Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.

 

[mfacey]

Try relaunching finder from the force quit menu.

 

[theBB]

Have you got any theme changing hacks installed?

No theme changing hacks, actually no hacks that I know of.

 

[theBB]

Try relaunching finder from the force quit menu.

Thanks for the suggestion. I would try (actually should have already tried) that, but while waiting for advice and experimenting, I have already deleted all of the funky iconed files, so I don't have anything left to test this idea.