Desktop folder cleanup/rebuilding?
AES
(spinning beachball lasting 30 to 90 seconds, but always clearing up
eventually) on a MacBook with OS 10.4.11.
Tried verifiying and repairing my HD using Disk Utility after restarting
from my original Install CD: _no_ problems reported, no repairs needed.
Latest evidence is that my problems may also be Desktop Folder related:
namely, the soft freeze often occurs when I do a simple Save (Cmd-S) of
an existing open document from several of my apps which will open a Save
window in column format if you instead use Save As to create a new file.
And, if I instead do a File-menu-selected Save As from one of those same
apps and select Desktop in the sidebar for the starting column, it takes
a long time for the Desktop apps to appear in the starting column;
whereas if I select anything else, like the Documents folder, in the
sidebar, the first column fills in instantaneously.
Finally, on one occasion I did a Finder relaunch during one of these
soft freezes and the whole system recovered back to full and normal
operation . . . except that none of the desktop icons reappeared
(totally blank desktop, except all the menus and hidden docks were there
and functioning).
Are there system or Library or preference files related to the Desktop
Folder that I can safely delete and let the system automatically rebuild?
Finally, the only thing I can think of as different in my recent use of
this computer, starting at about the same time this problem appeared, is
that I started using Mathematica 7 a lot. I don't trust Mathematica any
more -- v7 is a big, monstrous mess -- and I'm beginning to be suspect
it may have had some role in causing these problems.
Jolly Roger
AES <sie...@stanford.edu> wrote:
How many items are on your desktop? You might try moving or deleting the
.DS_Store file in your ~/Desktop folder, to see if that has an effect.
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JR
JF Mezei
> I posted recently about lengthy apparently Finder-related "soft freezes"
> (spinning beachball lasting 30 to 90 seconds, but always clearing up
> eventually) on a MacBook with OS 10.4.11.
If you have network volumes (NFS especially), this could simply be
caused by any access to the desktop getting the OS to remount those
drives simply because they appear on the desktop. (NFS mounts are "on
demand" and OS-X will dismount them when it thinks they are no longer
being used).
This is especially noticeable in Snow Leopard, it was not so obvious in
Tiger.
Nick Naym
sie...@stanford.edu wrote on 11/19/09 1:34 PM:
...
...
>
> Finally, the only thing I can think of as different in my recent use of
> this computer, starting at about the same time this problem appeared, is
> that I started using Mathematica 7 a lot. I don't trust Mathematica any
> more -- v7 is a big, monstrous mess -- and I'm beginning to be suspect
> it may have had some role in causing these problems.
Obvious question: Have you checked by uninstalling Mathematica? There are
several utilities (AppTrap, AppCleaner, AppZapper, and AppDelete) that help
do that by deleting not only the app, but all of its associated files -- and
they do so by moving the items to the trash, so if you subsequently
determine that Mathematica is not the offender, you can simply drag it and
its files back to their original locations.
AppTrap (http://onnati.net/apptrap) and AppCleaner
(http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner) are freebies; AppZapper
(http://appzapper.com) costs $12.95, and AppDelete
(http://www.reggieashworth.com) costs $7.99. Of them all, I believe that
AppDelete is the most thorough.
--
iMac (24", 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 320 GB HDD) � OS X (10.5.8)
Paul Sture
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
I've noticed a similar problem with an external disk which insists on
going to sleep when not used for a long time. The delay in he Finder
dialog appearing is definitely caused by the wretched thing waking up; I
can see it happening via the disk LED.
(The disk is a Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition - entirely my fault
as I couldn't resist a bargain, but I shan't be getting another.)
--
Paul Sture
AES
> > I posted recently about lengthy apparently Finder-related "soft freezes"
> > (spinning beachball lasting 30 to 90 seconds, but always clearing up
> > eventually) on a MacBook with OS 10.4.11.
and JF Mezei <jfmezei...@vaxination.ca> replied:
> If you have network volumes (NFS especially), this could simply be
> caused by any access to the desktop getting the OS to remount those
> drives simply because they appear on the desktop.
and Paul Sture <paul....@sture.ch> wrote:
> I've noticed a similar problem with an external disk which insists on
> going to sleep when not used for a long time. The delay in he Finder
> dialog appearing is definitely caused by the wretched thing waking up; I
> can see it happening via the disk LED.
I think you've both got it! My university has an AFS system for making
users' online files on the university's Unix servers system be mounted
as volumes on their individual desktops, and I've been using this
recently. I'll shut it off.