Can't access desktop icons

Hello,
I'm having an intermittent problem with the desktop icons on my MacBook Pro. Occasionally, the desktop icons become inaccessible. I'll hover over them with the mouse and can't click on them. I'll also sometimes add a document to the desktop and it doesn't show up. Both of these problems can be solved by clicking on the "desktop icon view" and changing the size of the icons briefly. I hate having to do this so often. Can anyone help with this?
Thank you!
Erin

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
One thing to try would be to repair your disk. You will have to boot from your install disc and navigate to Disk Utility on the install disc. The select your hard drive by brand name and go to the First Aid Tab and click on the "Repair Disk" button. Repeat until there is nothing left to repair.
If you get errors you cannot repair, then you will need a more powerful utility such as Disk Warrior to repair your drive.
You could also try creating a new user account and see if the problem is there in it.
You could also try reinstalling the OS, but don't do this until any errors reported by Disk Utility are repaired.
Good luck!

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[Solved] wy i can place xfce4 desktop icons in a "grid" only?

hello archers!
im in love with xfce4 DE, but the annoying thing is that i can place the desktop icons only in a invisible "grid" of tiles.
i changed the display manager to gdm, but it didn't help. i tryed changing the WM, but didn't not find out how to do that.
Yes, i dont understand how DE's working internal, cause there are so many parts, as DM, WM, session-manager, and so on, which confuses me.
So how i can place my icons individually on the desktop?
Thanks in advance!!
Last edited by xfce-tux (2011-09-12 21:13:34)

Another way to adjust the desktop grid size settings and more.
Source: http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfdesktop/tree/README
HIDDEN CUSTOMISATIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you're using the icon view, and would like to change how the text looks,
you have three things you can change: the opacity (transparency) of the
rounded text background, the color of the rounded text background, and the
color of the text itself.
You'd want to add something like this to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file:
style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 75
XfdesktopIconView::selected-label-alpha = 100
XfdesktopIconVIew::ellipsize-icon-labels = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-x-offset = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-y-offset = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-color = "#ff0000"
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-x-offset = 2
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-y-offset = 2
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-color = "#00ff00"
XfdesktopIconVIew::cell-spacing = 6
XfdesktopIconView::cell-padding = 6
XfdesktopIconView::cell-text-width-proportion = 2.5
base[NORMAL] = "#00ff00"
base[SELECTED] = "#5050ff"
base[ACTIVE] = "#0000ff"
fg[NORMAL] = "#ff0000"
fg[SELECTED] = "#ff0000"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#ff0000"
widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"
The first three entries set the opacity of the rounded text background
(allowed values are from 0 (totally transparent) to 255 (totally opaque),
and whether or not unselected icons get their labels ellipsized
(truncated) to fit on one line. (The 'selected-' version controls the
opacity of icons that have been selected with the mouse.)
The second six entries can be used to enable a text shadow to be painted
with the icon labels. The offsets are in pixels. Setting them to 0 (the
defaults) will disable the shadows entirely. Again, the 'selected-'
versions apply to icons that have been selected with the mouse.
The third four entries set spacing and sizing for individual icons on
the grid. The 'cell-spacing' property specifies the spacing between each
'cell' in the grid of icons. The 'cell-padding' property sets extra
padding placed around each icon+text. The units for these two are in
pixels. The 'cell-text-width-proportion' property specifies the maximum
width of the text label underneat the icon, as a multiplier of the icon
width (so for 30px icons, '2.5' would leave a 75px wide area underneath
for the text).
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* NORMAL sets the color for the regular, unselected state.
* SELECTED sets the color for when the icon is selected, and the desktop has
keyboard/mouse focus.
* ACTIVE sets the color for when the icon is selected, but the desktop does
not have keyboard/mouse focus.
The final three entries set the color of the label text. See above for the
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I can't remember what I did, but suddenly, when restarting my iMac the whole desktop (along with hard disk icon) became empty.
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iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)
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iMac Mac OS X (10.4.8)
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Read this...
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-Bmer
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ITMS: MacOSG Podcast
 An Apple User Group 

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Can't access desktop icons

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