My Macintosh HD icon has gone from the desktop.

James Hunt

All by itself...turned on my Macbook 2.16 and it wasn't there. All of the programs are still working, the external drive icon still shows, same for DVD drive when it's working....but no Macintosh HD. It's not on the left hand side of a Finder window either.

Have I simply deleted the icon in some way or is it a sympton of something more serious..is the hard drive about to go belly up do you think?

Thanks for any responses.

triple h

Don't know if this will work --- try it anyway --- open finder and click macintosh HD ( top left, in finder window )


a few weeks ago when i opened my finder my applications was gone ( all by itself, just like you) So i clicked the macintosh HD on my desktop and it was restored back to the finder window. I remember breaking out in a cold sweat when my applications folder was gone. So i kind of know how you feel.

cornbb

Thats a real pain in the ass, it seems to be a bug in OS X as its happened to me and a few others in my office.

Luckily its not a sign that anything is wrong with the drive, its just a missing icon. I remember finding a fix somewhere on the net a while back but can't find it now.

In the meantime, assuming the icon has disappeared from Finder too, if you need to open your Mac HD directory do the following -

- Open the Terminal (go into Applications -> Utilities and double-click Terminal).

- Copy and paste the following line into Terminal and press Enter:

open /

Simon201

Had exactly the same on a friends Macbook the other week. Navigate to your user preferences and delete 'com.apple.desktop.plist' or 'com.apple.finder.plist' cant remember exactly which one but I'm sure deleting one of them did it for me.

James Hunt

Thanks lads....it's semi-sorted.

By semi, I mean that I've managed to get an alias of the icon to stay on the desktop, but nothing in the finder window. This thread is helpful, to a point.

Developers Tools is not something I would know the first thing about...doesn't look like I have it at any rate, but it solved that guy's identical problem.

James Hunt

Simon201 wrote: »

Had exactly the same on a friends Macbook the other week. Navigate to your user preferences and delete 'com.apple.desktop.plist' or 'com.apple.finder.plist' cant remember exactly which one but I'm sure deleting one of them did it for me.

Where are those preferences Simon?

aidan_walsh

James Hunt wrote: »

Where are those preferences Simon?

/Users/[user account name]/Library/Preferences

James Hunt

Thanks lads, removing the preference file didn't work, even after resetting the preference and restarting, but..success.

Francine has an Applescript that works.

Jobs a good 'un.

Thanks a million, lads.