My folder icons swap around spontaneously. Why??

Michael Levin

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Mar 23, 2004, 7:45:28 PM3/23/04

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I just got a new G5 and installed Panther on it, as well as a bunch of
commercial software. Everything seems to work fine, but three times so far I
noticed something very odd: some of my folders have changed their icons to
be copies of other folders' custom icons. This seems to have happened
spontaneously and I can't discern any pattern as to which folders this
happened to. Any thoughts as to what might have caused it? I ran a "repair
permissions" and tomorrow will reboot off the Techtool Pro and DiskWarrior
CDs to check the file system. Has anyone had this happen or know why it
might?

--

Mike Levin
mlev...@comcast.net

Harvey Waxman

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Mar 23, 2004, 7:56:15 PM3/23/04

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In article <BC864459.120EB%mlev...@comcast.net>,
Michael Levin <mlev...@comcast.net> wrote:

that happened to me a little while ago after a year's use. OSX.3.2 G4
PowerBook. A restart solved it as I recall. It wasn't just folders either,
some files showed were affected. Never came back.

I had been leaving my computer on 24/7. Mac tech suggested a restart once a
week, FWIW.

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Gregory Weston

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Mar 23, 2004, 8:02:03 PM3/23/04

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In article <BC864459.120EB%mlev...@comcast.net>,
Michael Levin <mlev...@comcast.net> wrote:

There is a known (acknowledged by Apple) issue with the Finder in 10.3.x
where the icon cache becomes corrupt. It's harmless (outside the case
where you get an uncorrupted but wrong icon and cognitive dissonance
ensues) but annoying. A logout should be sufficient to correct it if
it's truly bothersome.

G

Michael Levin

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Mar 24, 2004, 9:14:13 PM3/24/04

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On 3/23/04 8:02 PM, in article
gwestonREMOVE-E98...@netnews.comcast.net, "Gregory Weston"
<gwesto...@CAPSattbi.com> wrote:

Interesting. Someone on a forum website suggested deleting the icon caches;
I did delete the cache folders within User/Library/Icons folder, and logged
out (rebooted, in fact). No dice! The changed folder icons did not come back
to normal. I wonder if there's any way to save all custom icons and restore
them in such cases? Anyone heard of a utility to save custom icons?

--

Mike Levin
mlev...@comcast.net

David C.

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Mar 28, 2004, 1:09:46 PM3/28/04

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Harvey Waxman <in...@dinghydogs.comthefrown> writes:
>
> that happened to me a little while ago after a year's use. OSX.3.2
> G4 PowerBook. A restart solved it as I recall. It wasn't just
> folders either, some files showed were affected. Never came back.
>
> I had been leaving my computer on 24/7. Mac tech suggested a
> restart once a week, FWIW.

No need to restart the entire computer for what is most certainly a
Finder bug. If you log-out/in on a regular basis, that will restart
the Finder and won't force all the rest of the system to restart.

If you're running file sharing or any other kind of server, this will
be better, since a logout doesn't stop background tasks.

FWIW, my Mac is left on 24/7, but I log out before going to bed every
night, so the Finder gets launched every day. The only time I've
ever seen icons get rearranged is if some app clobbers a folder's
.DS_Store file (Apple's system updaters seem to do this to the
Applications folder a lot, and I don't know why.) But since I like
to have this folder sorted, a quick click on the menu bar to
re-arrange the icons puts everything back where I like them.

-- David