Icons rearrange themselves!

Hi,
In my applications folder, I keep it in the icon view mode, and I arrange them with all Apple programs on the left side, and all my sharewares, etc. on the right side. This has worked well for a few years . . . when all of a sudden, in Snow Leopard, every few hours, as I look in the Applications folder - OMG! they've all rearranged themselves alphabetically ??
I'll spend 10 minutes rearranging them back to how I like them - they'll stay that way for a day? or an hour, it changes, and then when I look in the Applications folder again - they did it again! Rearranged themselves!!
Anyone know what's going on?
All maintenence things are done on my computer - latest in upgrades, etc!
Thanks,
Larry

Larry Cohen1 wrote:
But, just asking, do you know if I did your idea and deleted the main plist - would that have effected ALL my folders, which I suspect it would?
Normally when you delete a plist file associated with any application, that application will usually behave as if it's never been used that that particular user before.
There are some exceptions. For example, you can create a custom background image for each folder. Those choices are stored with the folder, not the plist file. This is why when you download applications such as Firefox and open the installer, you see a Finder folder that has a background with icon placements and background "art" (in the case of Firefox the "art" is really a diagram trying to illustrate to the user that they should drag the application icon to their "Applications" folder) even though you have never opened the folder before.
Since there's no hard rule as to what is stored in an application's "plist" file, you can never be sure what will happen when you get rid of the old plist file. This is why I generally don't just delete the file. I typically either drag to desktop or drag to trash (but don't empty trash). That way if the removal had any undesired side-effects I can always drag the original plist file back.
Glad to hear it's fixed!

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wardcst24 wrote:
biggrikk wrote:
After painstakingly trying to arrange all my icons into page categories, i.e.. all music oriented apps on one or two single pages, game apps on their own page, etc. and whenever my phone freezes for whatever reason that causes me to remove the battery for a few seconds; when powering up the phone again, I notice that all my icons are scattered everywhere on other pages. I first noticed this after I batched my apps and put many of them into the SD card so that my phone's internal RAM wouldn't be so overwhelmed by storing all the apps. Has anyone else come across this situation before?
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Larry Cohen1 wrote:
But, just asking, do you know if I did your idea and deleted the main plist - would that have effected ALL my folders, which I suspect it would?
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http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202949
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http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202959
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rkdmen wrote:
I've tried deleting ds_store and arrange automatically none....
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LSDLLC wrote:
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