Hidden Desktop Folder

Hi all, having a mysterious little problem here. While I can still open my Desktop folder in a Finder window through the sidebar and the Terminal, the folder no longer shows up in my Home directory. In Photoshop, the folder Desktop is grayed out, so I'm assuming it's hidden. Not only is it hidden here, but also in the Home folder on another HD with OS 10.3.9. Where would I fix the hidden setting for my Desktop folders? They are not listed in 10.3.9's .hidden file and there is no .hidden file under my 10.4.5 / directory.
EDIT- Seems to me that Basilisk II made it hidden when it loaded my home directory as Unix within the emulator.
PowerMac G4 1.25DP, Quadra 700 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1.5GB Ram, nVidia 4600, 80+250 HD

run the following terminal command
chflags 0 ~/Desktop

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I have accidentally hidden a folder on my desktop in Win 7

I have accidentally hidden a folder on my desktop, how do I get it back? I am on windows 7, thanks

Run Windows Explorer and click on Desktop in the left hand list.
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How to delete the Desktop Folder in the User folder

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and I changed this folder to .Desktop to have it hidden
but there is another folder Desktop non-hidden + my .Desktop folder always ready when I restart...
How should I keep it hidden or out of my system ?
Message was edited by: c8455

Click here and use the instructions to hide it.
(46869)

Time machine only displays my desktop folder

When I enter Time Machine, I want to be able to move back in time and browse my ENTIRE COMPUTER in the past - - - including the top level of my internal hard disk and see all files and folders on it.
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Steve Holton wrote:
If the sidebar is hidden when you enter TM, you can still navigate. The "see the location of the current folder" icon (the one just to the left of the 'i' info icon will show you the folder hierarchy up to you machine name.
You mean the "Path" icon? (which is not one of the defaults).
As with the sidebar, that works IF you have a toolbar in the Finder window, and IF it has the proper icons. As with the sidebar, once you're in TM without it, you can't make it (or new icons) appear.

Permissions issue locks me out of my desktop folder

Hi All.
I have a worrying dilema that I am hoping someone can advise me on.
The symptoms are:
*1. A blank desktop after start-up (files, folders and volumes are not loading)*
*2. It takes an extremely long time for the "Devices", "Shared", and "Places" lists to populate in the open-dialogue sidebar.*
*3. Saving files from applications takes an unusually long time.*
*4. All other apps and non-Finder related activities appear unaffected.*
*5. If I navigate directly to the "Desktop" folder in my user folder in the Finder, it appears as an alias. I double click on it and a window appears which says it is trying to resolve the alias, and soon after I get this permissions error:*
*"The folder “Desktop” can’t be opened because you don’t have permission to see its contents."*
So overall this appears to be a permissions issue impacting my desktop directory. A similar thing happened six months ago. On that occasion I tried repairing permissions which didn't help and I ended up creating a new user account and restoring from Time Machine.
I'd prefer not to have to do that again. More so, I'd like to actually fix the root cause this time.
My appreciation in advance for any advise that at least makes my desktop reappear.
Best,
Wade.

Hi Barney.
OK, did so, and here it is:
*Last login: Sat May 22 16:56:58 on console*
*wade-laubes-mac-pro:~ wadelaube$ ls -aleO*
*total 106*
*drwxr-xr-x+ 36 wadelaube staff - 1224 22 May 08:06 .*
*0: group:everyone deny delete*
*drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin - 204 20 Feb 09:33 ..*
*-rw------- 1 wadelaube staff - 3 3 Jan 2008 .CFUserTextEncoding*
*-rw-r--r--@ 1 wadelaube staff hidden 21508 23 May 08:24 .DS_Store*
*drwxr-xr-x@ 3 wadelaube staff - 102 6 Dec 2008 .DownloadManager*
*drwxr-xr-x 3 wadelaube staff - 102 14 Oct 2009 .MacOSX*
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*drwxr-xr-x 2 wadelaube staff - 68 16 Dec 08:30 .Xcode*
*drwxr-x--x 4 wadelaube staff - 136 2 May 10:05 .adobe*
*-rw------- 1 wadelaube staff - 1070 22 May 10:47 .bash_history*
*drwx------@ 3 wadelaube staff - 102 11 Jan 2008 .cups*
*drwxr-xr-x 9 wadelaube staff - 306 23 May 18:01 .dropbox*
*drwxr-xr-x 6 wadelaube staff - 204 21 May 2008 .dvdcss*
*drwxr-xr-x 3 wadelaube staff - 102 21 Jan 10:37 .gem*
*drwxr-xr-x 3 wadelaube staff - 102 23 Feb 2008 .mplayer*
*-rw-r--r-- 1 wadelaube staff - 201 15 May 2008 .parallels_settings*
*-rw------- 1 wadelaube staff - 1024 3 May 07:32 .rnd*
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Wade.

'Desktop' folder on TM drive

suddenly, there is a "Desktop" folder at the root level of my TM drive. It is empty, except for invisibles. An ls -al shows:
drwx------ 4 josh 506 136 Feb 13 16:41 .
drwxrwxr-x 13 josh 506 510 Feb 13 16:28 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 506 0 Feb 13 16:28 .localized
drwxrwxrwx@ 2 josh 506 68 Feb 13 16:28 VISE Temp Items
It was created Wednesday at 4:41. I have 2 users on my Mac (an admin user, and my main account). Both of them have something on their desktops.
Its permissions are (from an ls -ale):
drwx------ 4 josh 506 136 Feb 13 16:41 Desktop
Is it possible it was created by an Office '04 update (the VISE Temp Items makes me suspect that)? Is it safe to delete?
SIDE NOTE: the exact same folder, with the exact same hidden contents, appeared on my Bootable Backup drive, at the exact same time. Is that safe to delete too?
ALSO: Terminal sees the VISE Temp Items file as NOT hidden, but Finder thinks it is hidden.
Ideas?
Thanks!

Hmm... I have the same Desktop folders on 3 external partitions. They were created on January 18 at the exact same time. I looked at Software Update, and I didn't install any updates around that time. I didn't do the research to see what hidden files are in them, but they're most likely the same. I don't have Office '04, so that couldn't be the reason they are there...

I can't find my Desktop folder on any of my TM backups

Hi everyone,
This is my first forum post, and I'm downright desperate.
I have migrated from my old MBP to a brand new one this weekend, and used Time Machine in an external HD to move my data. I had TM set up since February, with no options/exceptions.
As far as I can tell, everything migrated to the new computer perfectly (applications, preferences, documents, music, cookies, etc) except there is nothing on my Desktop after migration. It just so happens that I have (had?) a folder in my Desktop with all my graduate school work.
I have already looked in TM in all the backups since February, and there is no Desktop folder in my user account folder in any of them. Does this mean that TM has never backed up my Desktop from the beginning???
(BTW, I'm also having trouble to simply search for specific files when I look into the TM backup folder in my external HD. Whenever I use Spotlight, it only finds stuff on other folders in that external HD, but it doesn't return any hits from the TM backup folder, even when I look for files that I can see there just by browsing. How can I solve this?)
If it's true that TM never backed up my Desktop, my problem is then getting to my Desktop in the old computer. Trouble is, I had Leopard reinstalled at the Apple Store when I bought the new computer, since the system was supposedly backed up. As far as I know, the old computer was wiped clean and Leopard reinstalled in about 20 minutes by a Genius.
I have been told by them after the fact to use Data Rescue II to try and scour the old computer's internal drive by booting it up in target mode, but I haven't attempted it yet. I was told that if the Leopard reinstall was done in a specific way, I would be able to get to the old files with Data Rescue II still with their names and folder structures if they haven't been overwritten. However, if it was done 'another way', I would have lost the folders and any recovered files would be restored to a new location under a generic name like 'recover000001'. I'm afraid that in this case I will be overwhelmed by all the files in my old system (even if DRII supposedly recognizes file types), and I won't be able to sort through all of them to get at my important work.
Does anyone know what is the best way to get my data back???? It will be two years of work down the drain if I can't access the contents of that folder on my old Desktop.
Thanks so much for any advice!

V.K. wrote:
Chico Almendra wrote:
Hi everyone,
This is my first forum post, and I'm downright desperate.
I have migrated from my old MBP to a brand new one this weekend, and used Time Machine in an external HD to move my data. I had TM set up since February, with no options/exceptions.
As far as I can tell, everything migrated to the new computer perfectly (applications, preferences, documents, music, cookies, etc) except there is nothing on my Desktop after migration. It just so happens that I have (had?) a folder in my Desktop with all my graduate school work.
I have already looked in TM in all the backups since February, and there is no Desktop folder in my user account folder in any of them. Does this mean that TM has never backed up my Desktop from the beginning???
yes, that's what it means.
I don't understand. Why would it be that TM did not backup my Desktop? The Geniuses were not able to answer this question. I'm completely sure I didn't mark any exceptions when I set it up in February, and I've read other people also had similar problems with some of their folders and/or files (there's another thread where another user lost his Downloads folder; I accidentally replied to it instead of creating this new topic -- my apologies).
(BTW, I'm also having trouble to simply search for specific files when I look into the TM backup folder in my external HD. Whenever I use Spotlight, it only finds stuff on other folders in that external HD, but it doesn't return any hits from the TM backup folder, even when I look for files that I can see there just by browsing. How can I solve this?)
you have to use spotlight from TM interface, not directly from finder. start TM, scroll to a backup and use the search field to start a search.
That worked great; thanks. Is there a way to search across different backup dates in one go, or do I have to keep clicking back through time with the same search string?
If it's true that TM never backed up my Desktop, my problem is then getting to my Desktop in the old computer. Trouble is, I had Leopard reinstalled at the Apple Store when I bought the new computer
I don't understand why
you did that. did you have some problems with your old computer?
I didn't have any problems with the old computer. I was actually giving it to my mother for Mothers Day as her first Mac, and I wanted to make sure she would have as 'brand new' Mac experience as I could provide her.
, since the system was supposedly backed up. As far as I know, the old computer was wiped clean and Leopard reinstalled in about 20 minutes by a Genius.
I have been told by them after the fact to use Data Rescue II to try and scour the old computer's internal drive by booting it up in target mode, but I haven't attempted it yet.
this is your one and only hope of getting anything back if you did an erase and install. if you did an archive and install then old your old data will be in the "previous systems" folder at the top level of the hard drive.
Message was edited by: V.K.
Thanks. You reckon professional data recovery services would come up with more stuff (especially filenames and folder structures) than I would be able to, if I tried using DR myself? I'm terrified of going through my whole HD and sorting out the hundreds of thousands of files that weren't in the desktop in the first place.
I appreciate your help, V.K.; I still cannot get over the fact that TM can be so unreliable. What could have caused this catastrophe on my computer and in other users? They were lucky that they still had their data when they noticed TM wasn't backing it up, and the solutions were bone-chillingly similar to Windows voodoo tricks (e.g. delete the old TM plist, hard reboot, pray, and see if it works now). If this is the case, I can't see any options other than doing full manual backups periodically, but that defeats the TM purpose in the first place. Any thoughts or ideas?
Thanks!

How can I safetly remove the contents of the hidden volumes folder?

I have 149GB of backedup data eating up my laptop's hard drive space (300GB). I want that space BACK! But I'm afraid that I'll jack up my system even worse if I go in there and start deleting files.
Here's the my story...
I tried many times (unsuccessfully) to get Time Machine to work with my external WD Mybook Mirror Edition Hard Drive. It was work initially but then fail to backup and it wouldn't even really give me a reason it would just say that it was unable to back up to the drive. So I gave up, turned time machine off and tried to drag what files had been backed-up by Time Machine from my external drive to the trash. That's where my problems multiplied.
As you may know Time Machine puts some niffy locks on the files. Even holding down the option key while dragging the files didn't seem to fix things. So after doing some poking around I found this thread on the internet which showed me how to remove the ACL associated with the backup files so that they could be removed.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=80598
I preformed the following command line on my drive:
sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/<yourVolume> -d
Then I dragged the backup files to the trash (using the option key) and eventually the files were deleted. At least they weren't showing up on my external drive anymore.
I thought that I was in the clear, but then yesterday I got this stupid your scratch disk is full warning while trying to use Photoshop. SO I took a peak at my local disk and discovered that I only had 45MB left on a 300GB drive. I quickly went through all of my folders in the finder looking at how much disk space they were taking up. It didn't add up. There had to be some files that the finder wasn't showing me. So did some more research online and came across this little gem:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html#Anchor-Manually-49575
And so I executed this command to manually perform Mac's maintenance scripts:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
This took a while but had no effect. A few hours later, I came across this utility on the internet:
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/
According to OmniDiskSweeper I have 149GB of files in a hidden "Volumes" folder. After looking at the files, it's pretty clear to me that I'm looking at the backups from either Carbon Copy Clone, or Time Machine (Guessing the Later). I have CCC setup to backup to the same external drive mentioned earlier, but I stopped this process when I realized that I had more files on my local drive than I should have.
*So back to my original question. How do I nuke these freaking files without breaking anything. Thanks.*

Niel,
Thank you for the response. I did as you suggested, and it worked. I had a few hiccups along the way:
1. Option + Dragging the files to the trash didn't work alone. I had to unlock the files:
$ chflags -R nouchg /myfiles
2. My external drive was mounted with a number after it. So I tried to eject it and it gave me some crap about it being in use (Even after I quit everything). So I shut my machine down, Disconnected the USB cable, Restarted and then reconnected the external drive. It now shows under volumes without the number after it.
Thank you for the help.
Message was edited by: strayhand

I am having problems backing up my photos in iPhoto and dragging them to desktop folder to burn out of iPhoto!

I have been having issues with backing up photos in iPhoto for awhile. I used to burn them right out of iPhoto by selecting the folder, going to Share and then Burn. I have been getting an error message that says "Burn failed because there was an error producing data for the burn". So I started to drag the photos from iPhoto to a folder on the desktop, then burn the folder to a disc. This worked for awhile. Recently iPhoto will not allow me to drag photos to a desktop folder. I can select them in iPhoto, click on them and it shows the plus sign and number of photos, but when I drop them it does nothing. I can do it one at a time for about 4 photos, then it stops again. I also tried to export the photos into a folder on the desktop and it says Unable to create /Users/... I do back up photos to a TimeCapsule as well, but like to have a DVD in a fireproof safe too. I also ran disk utility repair disk permissions. I have an account for my wife as well and both iphotos share the same iphoto library but ths has never been a problem until recently. She also uses aperature, but pulls the photos from iphoto to edit them. Any help would be much appreciated.

I have been having issues with backing up photos in iPhoto for awhile. I used to burn them right out of iPhoto by selecting the folder, going to Share and then Burn. I have been getting an error message that says "Burn failed because there was an error producing data for the burn". So I started to drag the photos from iPhoto to a folder on the desktop, then burn the folder to a disc. This worked for awhile. Recently iPhoto will not allow me to drag photos to a desktop folder. I can select them in iPhoto, click on them and it shows the plus sign and number of photos, but when I drop them it does nothing. I can do it one at a time for about 4 photos, then it stops again. I also tried to export the photos into a folder on the desktop and it says Unable to create /Users/... I do back up photos to a TimeCapsule as well, but like to have a DVD in a fireproof safe too. I also ran disk utility repair disk permissions. I have an account for my wife as well and both iphotos share the same iphoto library but ths has never been a problem until recently. She also uses aperature, but pulls the photos from iphoto to edit them. Any help would be much appreciated.

Updated to Maverick, had a desktop folder for pictures I had transferred from my PC. That folder is gone, no icons in Pictures in Finder but the photos are still in images in All My Files! How do I get the organized folder back?

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I actually just noticed the "media" option is no longer listed along the left side of Finder. I think that is where I accessed iphoto and my other picture folder.
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Indesign cs6 freezes/crashes on Windows 7 64 bit selecting desktop folder

Dear All,
I'm experiencing a very strange behaviour of Indesign CS6 who freezes/closes in specific situations connected with desktop folder.
I try to explain the issue:
I got a brand new PC with Xeon CPU E3-1246 3.5 GHZ, 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 64bit and Clean installation of Indesign CS6.
Indesign works great and fast, but everytime I try to open a file (from file ---> open) and select the desktop folder the program stop thinking for 1 second than closes down without crashing, without errors without anything.
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I couldn't find anything useful on the internet to solve this kind of problem.
Does anybody had the same problem? How did you solve that?
Thanks in advance for help.

The following is the error code:
Firma problema:
Nome evento problema:                    BEX
Nome applicazione:                           InDesign.exe
Versione applicazione:                       8.1.0.420
Timestamp applicazione:                   54aaae3e
Nome modulo con errori:                  StackHash_a7aa
Versione modulo con errori:             0.0.0.0
Timestamp modulo con errori:         00000000
Offset eccezione:                                f0104c61
Codice eccezione:                               c0000005
Dati eccezione:                                    00000008
Versione SO:                                        6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
ID impostazioni locali:                        1040
Informazioni aggiuntive 1:                a7aa
Ulteriori informazioni 2:                     a7aa91f17ea749d42a4de3b390fa5b3d
Ulteriori informazioni 3:                     a7aa
Ulteriori informazioni 4:                     a7aa91f17ea749d42a4de3b390fa5b3d

"Desktop" folder on external hard drives

Hi all,
I have regularly seen a folder called "Desktop" appear on my external firewire and usb drives. I usually delete it and think nothing more but today I attached a new external drive and there it was again......
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Does anyone know????

It is probably a relic of Apple's old OS, which lives on partly in the Carbon library. Used to, you could have two paths:
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Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder:latest_updates.doc
and they would refer to two distinct files. In some respects, the good 'ole days weren't all that good.

Desktop Folder Redirection slow access

Ok, I've scoured the network for weeks now trying to resolve this.
Using Windows 7 fully patched, and file servers are 2012 R2
We have folder redirection in place for Documents and Desktop.
The folders are redirected to one of their mapped drives. When accessing the mapped drive, the drive hangs whilst the green progress bar occurs when trying to display the desktop folder. Once accessed, this can be ok for further accesses but
then may recur again later. It is only the desktop folder. Documents is fine. I've tried customising the folder for item type, removed the icon cache, indexed the server, recreated local profiles, moved information off and deleted the folder
on server to allow to recreate etc etc. The issues as I say is intermittent but extremely frustrating.
The group policies originally redirected to a mapped drive when the home directory was set up in AD. However, we've moved away from that, and now the group policies use unc for the redirected folders. All permissions on the server are set up
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The desktop in favorites in Windows Explorer appears to respond fine even when the mapped drive doesn't. Occasionally the mapped drive is fine, and in this case the Desktop in Favorites isn't.
I've checked the registry, all values in Shell Folders and User Shell Folders are set up correctly.
I've reached the end of what could be wrong, and have no idea what is causing this issue. Any help greatly appreciated.
Regards
Ian

Hi lan cope,
Please take a try to uncheck the "Automatically detect settings"
under
Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings -> Automatic Configurations.
Check if this could help here.
Besides, disable TCP autotuning with the following command and check again:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
Reference: (Description of the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature for HTTP traffic on Windows Vista-based computers )
Best regards
Michael Shao
TechNet Community Support

When I click on my desktop folder in the sidebar, I get a screen titled: Desktop-bash-80x24...

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If that doesn't do the fix try this fix from Linc. https://discussions.apple.com/message/17853661#17853661

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