[quadraphonic]

Hi guys,
I'm very new to Macs, but not to computers. I installed MSN Messenger on my PB and now, when its running, I get the MSN Messenger 4 drive icon on my desktop. Is there any way to get rid of it?

[wei]

i think this question is more suitable to be posted on OS X forum

[The Placid Casual]

Welcome to the boards

I just installed MSN myself, and what you can see is the application 'drive' icon. Apps are increasingly released as .dmg files, a kind of 'disk image' which when launched are mounted on a 'virtual disk' on the desktop...

You then drag the apps from the 'disk' to wherever you want to install it (Usually the apps folder)...

To get rid of the 'disk', you can drag it straight to the trash...

You will see a *lot* of these icons when installing apps in OS X.

(You can even delete whole programs etc this way by just dragging the folder to the trash... no need for Windows 'uninstall manager' etc)

If you need OS X help, the OS X forum, or Software forum are the best bet...

[JKT]

Originally posted by quadraphonic:
Hi guys,
I'm very new to Macs, but not to computers. I installed MSN Messenger on my PB and now, when its running, I get the MSN Messenger 4 drive icon on my desktop. Is there any way to get rid of it?

I suspect that what is happening is that MSN Messenger is delivered as a .dmg file? .dmg files are so-called "disk images" which mount on the desktop as a virtual drive. If this is happening every time you launch MSN messenger, then what has happened is either that you haven't actually installed it yet as you think you have (see below), or the alias you are clicking to launch it (e.g. in the Dock) is pointing to the version on the .dmg and not the version you (should) have copied to your applications folder.

To correct this - check that you have indeed copied MSN Messenger to your Applications folder by drag and dropping it to that folder from the mounted disk image. If a copy is already there it will ask you to replace it, if not it will copy it to your applications folder.

Once you have a copy in the Applications folder, un-mount the disk image by ejecting its icon.

Drag the icon for MSN Messenger in the Applications folder to the Dock (if you have a previous icon for it already there, drag it off the dock and drop it to remove it as this is pointing at the wrong copy).

When you click this newly created Dock icon, it should now launch the copy in the Applications folder and not the one on the disk image.

To avoid this happening in the future, always copy over the old version in the Applications folder, un-mount the disk image and then, when you launch the application by clicking the Dock icon, it will always launch the version on your hard drive in the Applications folder and not the one on the .dmg.

The MacOS is very flexible with the launching of applications that come as complete packages on .dmg files - you can typically run the app from the mounted disk image without physically installing it on the hard drive first which is useful for trying out demos etc before committing to keeping the application.

Hope that makes sense and that it helps...

[quadraphonic]

Thanks for all the help guys. I followed your suggestions and it worked like a charm. I'll double check where I'm posting next time!

Will