Icons not staying put in folder windows

Question

Just recently if I rearrange the icons in a folder window after I do a restart the icons reaarange themselves and the folder window resizes back to a previous size and arrangement - it's driving me mad! Do I need to dump some preference file or clear some cache or the like - if so where would I find said preference or cache?

Answer 1

Information about the properties of a particular window, such as the view, icon size and arrangement, window size, and so on, are stored in an invisible file in every folder that has been opened. The file is named .DS_Store, the simplest way to see this is to get one of the utilities, such as TinkerTool, which allows you to see invisibles, or to use the list command in Terminal:
ls -al /
hit the retrun key, and it will show all the files and folders at the root level of the drive. It sounds like the .DS_Store file is not being written to. You could try trashing it. If you use Terminal you would type:
rm /.DS_Store
hit return, and it will delete the .DS_Store file for the root level of the drive. Open the window and size and arrange to your tastes, then close the window. Make sure the window is closed when you shutdown. You can verify that a new .DS_Store file was created by using the list command again and check the date. Thus I just trashed mine, then opened and reset stuff and ran the list command:
-bash:~francine$ ls -al /
total 11979
drwxrwxr-t 41 root admin 1496 Feb 5 12:12 .
drwxrwxr-t 41 root admin 1496 Feb 5 12:12 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 francine admin 12292 Feb 5 12:13 .DS_Store
----more stuff----
You see that a new .DS_Store file was created today at 12:13.
Francine
Francine
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