Re: Internal harddisk (= startvolume) does not appear on desktop

On 19 Sep., 17:00, demp...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Empson) wrote:
<manfred.koois...@xxxxxx> wrote:
On 19 Sep., 14:53, nospam <nos...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1190204506.241571.267...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

<manfred.koois...@xxxxxx> wrote:
Since this morning the symbol for my internal harddisk (which is also
my startvolume !) does not appear on my desktop anymore. All programs
and files work fine, and external volumes appear as usual. Also, I can
access all folders on my HD from the Finder via "Go to" > "Go to
folder ..." [roughly translated from German]. Only the HD itself
remains gone.

check finder preferences, and in the general tab, make sure that the
checkbox for showing hard disks on the desktop is checked.

Thank you. Yes, the checkbox for showing hard disks is checked. I
already made sure of that.

How many icons are on your desktop? If your desktop is full, the hard
drive icon might have just got buried underneath something. You should
definitely clean up your desktop if it has got to this state.

Another possible theory occurs to me, but let's narrow it down a little.

First, what Mac model and version of Mac OS X are you running?

If you open a new Finder window, does the hard drive icon appear in the
sidebar? (If not, go into Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and make sure
"Hard disks" is checked. Does it appear after that?)

If you go to "Computer", using the "Go" menu, it should open a window
which shows all your mounted volumes. Does the hard drive appear there?

If the hard drive doesn't appear in "Computer", my next suggestion is to
run Disk Utility and verify the disk. If it reports any problems, you
will need to restart from your system install DVD, get past the first
(language selection) screen, then choose Disk Utility from the
"Utilities" menu and use it to repair the disk.

If none of that helps, perhaps your hard disk has somehow been made
invisible. There is a setting for this (not easily accessible). Someone
had a similar problem recently where their home folder had been set to
be invisible.

In that case I was able to supply instructions for fixing the problem
using a command line utility (in Terminal) which is supplied as part of
the developer tools. You can install the developer tools from your
system install DVD/CD set.

I'm also aware of at least one Shareware tool which can set the
invisible bit: Xray.

--
David Empson
demp...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Okay, I found the problem and the solution. David, you were on the
right track:

Obviously there is a bug in OS X, causing the startup volume icon to
disappear from the desktop and folder sidebar after certain
installers. The problem and possible solutions are described here:

http://www.e-frontier.com/article/articleview/2328/1/769/

and here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305402

There was a discussion in some forum where two people had this problem
after installing the Poser 7 Demo. The last thing I did yesterday
evening was to install this demo. This morning my icon was gone.

e-frontier (the producers of Poser) give two solutions, one of which
is given in the Apple Support article as well, the other is easier and
the one I used: execute the following Apple Script:

tell application "System Events"
set visible of disk "NameofDisk" to true
end tell

tell application "Finder" to quit
delay 1
tell application "Finder" to launch

It worked for me and my harddisk icon is back.

Thank you to everyone who tried to help me. Maybe someone with the
same problem will stumble over this post and find a solution here.

.

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