[MichaelJPR]

If I try to drag anything to my desktop, I get the message, "The item "XX" could not be moved because "desktop" cannot be modified."

What did I do to create this preference? How do I turn it off?

Thanks again, folks.....

[pat++]

Open your home folder in the Finder, and use Get Info (cmd-I) on the Desktop folder. Make sure the owner is you, and you have read/write permissions.

[MichaelJPR]

That did it!

Hmmmm.....my 11 year old daughter was selected as the owner. I think I know how this happened.....

Thanks a bunch.

Mike

[pimephalis]

Originally posted by pat++:
Open your home folder in the Finder, and use Get Info (cmd-I) on the Desktop folder. Make sure the owner is you, and you have read/write permissions.

Alternatively, you could open up the terminal and type 'ls -la *' and look for the line concerning the Desktop. Here's mine:

drwxrw-rw- 30 pimephalis staff 1020 Apr 4 12:53 Documents

The information you're interested in is on the far left. Those 10 letters and dashes are the information and permissions concerning the file/folder. The first space will have a 'd' if it's a directory, or a '-' if it's a file. The next three tell you the permissions as they apply to the file's owner (in this case, pimephalis). I have Read, Write, and eXecute permissions. The second triplet contains the permissions which apply to the group of which pimephalis is a member (in this case, staff). Here, those people may both read and write to this directory. Finally, all others may also Read and Write.

You likely either have the wrong owner of the Desktop folder listed or don't have write permissions. If it's the wrong owner, type:

sudo chown yourusername Desktop

If it's the wrong permissions, type

chmod u+rwx Desktop

HTH

[Spheric Harlot]

It's a good idea to run Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) every once in a while, selecting "Repair privileges"

.s

[MichaelJPR]

I ran the utility, and it seemed to help a bunch. I didn't even know it was there. Thanks, Harlot!

[Spheric Harlot]