Why can't I drag icons on my imac desktop?

Question

all of a sudden can't drag icons, either on desktop or elsewhere on my i=mac. everything else seems to be working fine. icons just don't budge, when i ran problem by folks at apple store at biltmore plaza they had no clue. do i have a mouse problem, perhaps, or do you smell a rat? Thank you for taking my message.

Answer

This question was answered on December 2, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

One way to fix this problem is to reboot. If rebooting isn't fixing it for you, try fixing permissions. If you don't have write permission to your own desktop, you can't move things. If for some reason fix permissions doesn't work, do this (very carefully)

run terminal

type these three commands, exactly as they appear. You will have to type in your password for the middle one.

cd ..

sudo chown -R myshortusername:staff myshortusername

sudo chmod -R 755 myshortusername

this will reset privs for your home folder, to what should be a usable state. (not exactly what they normally would be, but that would take more commands to get spot on) Because of how the finder caches these things, you may need to log out and log back in again to make the changes noticed.

Author

Posted by Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 2, 2004