[KP*]

About a month ago, a most annoying thing began happening on my desktop: most of the time one or more of the icons on my desktop will have a duplicate -- not another file, just another icon, both of which represent the same file (i.e. throw one in the trash and they both disappear). It all started when I accidentally dragged a couple hundred files onto the desktop, and I think that confused it somehow, and it's been having this problem ever since.

I don't keep more than a few files on the desktop at a time, just stuff I download and then file away elsewhere, but a couple of them always seem to multiply. Repairing permissions does nothing, trashing the finder and desktop prefs does nothing. Anybody know what this is or what might have gotten corrupted to cause this?

[Chuckit]

Have you tried trashing your desktop folder's .DS_STORE file?

[pat++]

rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices.*

may help too... (log out and log back in after entering the command in Terminal)

[KP*]

Thanks, I've tried both, and still the problem persists. When I delete the .DS_Store file, the duplicates immediately go away, but then more pop up a few minutes later.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by KP*:
Thanks, I've tried both, and still the problem persists. When I delete the .DS_Store file, the duplicates immediately go away, but then more pop up a few minutes later.

Try deleting the .DS_Store file and then immediately killing the Finder so that it can't write the same file again since it "remembers" that file in RAM. Start up the Terminal and type:

cd ~/Desktop
rm .DS_Store
killall Finder

See if that helps.