Since I put on OS9 ... I am no longer able to open my files unless I drop them on their parent application.....
Anyone have a fix?

------------------
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[reader50]

Trash the invisible Desktop file. You can rebuild this file by holding down cmnd-option during bootup, but deleting it & letting the finder build a new one from scratch is better.

The easiest way to delete the Desktop file is to use the free Techtool utility. You can get it here. Just scroll a little way down the page.

The Desktop file maps application types with icons & the proper applications. You should rebuild or replace it after any major system upgrade or new application installation.

Good luck.

[This message has been edited by reader50 (edited 06-14-2000).]

[reader50]

---- emailed to me ----

Thank you for your help....... It worked!
Do you know also what has happened to my icons? I mean they used to show up
as Quark or Photoshop or whatever~~~ now they are just blank icons with file
description below~~~

Spencer

The invisible Desktop file is mainly a reference database for the finder to supply the correct icons for each filetype, and to know what application to send each filetype to when you open a file.

Glitches in the Desktop file can cause files to be sent to the wrong applications (or to no application), can cause the wrong icon to appear for a file (or no icon to appear, just the file name with nothing above it), or can cause odd Finder behavior simply because the Finder is confused by conflicting data.

Every partition & mounted volume has it's own invisible Desktop file. My guess is that you rebuilt the Desktop file on your boot volume or partition, and that Photoshop or your Photoshop files are on another partition.

If this is correct, the solution would be to trash the Desktop files on every volume/partition. You may have quite a long bootup while the Finder rebuilds all of them one at a time, but all icons should behave correctly afterwards.

Hope this helps. If it doesn't, come on back and we'll see if we can think of anything else. Even if it does work, come on back anyway. We can always use more Mac people around!
Tech note for those interested: Actually, each Desktop file is really two files named "desktop.db" and "desktop.df". You can see this with ResEdit or any other utility that lets you see invisible files.

Thank you again for your help. I am a Mac person for sure and trying to become more technically inclined.

So, how do I go about trashing them one by one?

Thanx again.

[wlonh]

if you mean the desktop DB and DF files (one by one) just use TechTool 1.2.1 freeware as mentioned by Reader50

if you mean invisible files in general, you can 'see' them and delete them 'one by one' by using Sherlock's 'Edit' option and selecting the 'invisible' criteria when doing a 'Find'... if you need more instruction on this, just post to this thread again

[reader50]

You can use ResEdit to change invisible files to visible files, but ResEdit is a large & powerful program. For something more convenient, I use Change Visibility, a contextual menu utility from Alsoft. Contextual menus pop up when you click on something while holding down the Control key. They offer shortcuts to often-used commands, or to new commands like Change Visibility.

With Change Visibility, when you control-click on a file/folder, a menu will come up that offers (among other things) to make that file/folder invisible. If what you clicked on was a folder/volume (and there are one or more invisible items in it), a second option turns up to "Make Contained Items Visible" with an arrow. Follow the arrow and you get a list of invisible items in that folder/volume. Select any of them and it will be made visible.

You can do this to each volume/partition in turn, making the Desktop.DB & Desktop.DF files visible. Then, move these files from one volume/partition to the trash & reboot. After rebooting, empty the trash.

Repeat with each remaining volume/partition, trashing, rebooting, emptying trash. Don't move the Desktop files from more than one volume/partition to the trash at a time. The Finder renames duplicate files in the trash, & your Mac expects the Desktop files to have the same name until you reboot.

Using Sherlock for this is not a good idea. While Sherlock will find invisible files & can move them to the trash, the trash will not hold invisible files. The Finder will insist on deleting invisible files at once, and you need the Desktop files to remain in the trash until the next reboot.

I don't actually know if Techtool will get the Desktop files on every volume/partition, or just on the boot partition. Sorry - power user. I like to have full control over the process, so I do it myself.

You can get the free Change Visibility here. Select it from the pop-up Download menu.

If you want ResEdit (also free), you can get it here.

Hope this covers everything.

[This message has been edited by reader50 (edited 06-15-2000).]

[wlonh]

techtool will do the deed if you shift-select the volumes, you can select them all