desktop Icons Hidden, how do i get them back ?

[larryphrank]

For some reason, i logged onto my Macbook , and there are no desktop icons visible. There were last night when i logged off.

How do I get them back so I can see them ??

larry

[Buzz]

Icons for what? You can hide the hard drive icon, but if you application icons or file icons on the desktop, they should still show. Have you tried simply restarting again?

[larryphrank]

Every Icon. I did try restarting it several times.
The screen has the same display image, The Dock is still in the same position ( onthe bottom) and its contents havnt changed.
But that is it, just the dispaly image and dock ( no hard drive icons, no personal icons...)

It doesnt seem to have lost any memory. But , the only way for me to access things is to go to the "spotlight" ( or whatever it is called) Type in what i want to access, then go from there.

FInder, is located on the dock, but when i click on it, it doesnt get accessed.

larry

[Buzz]

Try repairing permissions.

Go to Applications/Utilities and launch Disk Utility.

Select your hard drive on the left side of the window, then click "Repair Permissions" Wait for it to finish. If it finds items to correct, then click "Repair Permissions" again until it finds nothing.

Then restart again.

[larryphrank]

Did the above, found a bunch of items to correct, corrected them, but no change as far as the missing icons go.

[Buzz]

If you log in as another user, does that account show icons on the desktop?

What OS are you running? What Mac model?

[larryphrank]

Macbook
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Ive always logged in with the same account. As far as I know, I only have one account on the computer .

[larryphrank]

I just checked, and the desktop icons dont appear on other accounts either.

[Buzz]

The best advice I could give you without seeing the system, would be to do an Archive and Install of the OS. This should take approximately 20 minutes and repair anything that may be wrong with the OS.

Simply reboot from the OS DVD and proceed to install. When you see the "Options" button, click it. Choose Archive and Install and Retain Users and Retain Network Settings. Then continue with the install.

This will reinstall the OS then move all your user files back to the new OS and reset the network settings to what you currently use. It will also create a new folder on the hard drive titles "Previous System Folder" this will be a dump of what the OS had before the Archive and Install, just in case you need to copy anything from it.

This is the best I can do over a message board. You may want to consider taking the MacBook into an Apple Store. They'll be more than happy to troubleshoot with you. And since they can directly see the problem, may have a better solution.