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Achiever

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 23, 2008
536
214
After upgrading to 11.6, I have had the following issue on my user account (not on other user accounts) whereby I cannot move any files onto or off of the desktop. I get a message that the file is "moving" or "copying", which never ends. I am talking small files, like documents, PDFs or single photos. I can drag files from email directly into the Finder, but not the Desktop. Also, I cannot rename a document which is currently on the desktop. When I try to do so, I get this very weird error message. Suffice it to say, I am not using the file in any other way.


Screen Shot 2021-09-20 at 9.35.57 AM.png



I have tried figuring out how to address this but am out a loss. Before I spend an hour with Apple Support, I was wondering if anyone else had a suggestion. I have logged out and back into my account and also restarted the machine, to no avail. Nothing on Activity Monitor which looks to be running and failing in the background. iCloud not frozen and I have quit and relaunched the Finder. Any thoughts?

I should add that 11.6 seems to have weirdly resent a bunch of other preferences and settings, but I have been able to put those back in place. This is th lingering issue. Using a fusion drive iMac. TIA.
 

ignatius345

macrumors 604
Aug 20, 2015
7,581
12,938
Yikes. I'd boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility there. Something ain't right in your user account. Worst case I guess you could reinstall everything from your backup.
 
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Achiever

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 23, 2008
536
214
Yikes. I'd boot into Recovery and run Disk Utility there. Something ain't right in your user account. Worst case I guess you could reinstall everything from your backup.
Thank you for this suggestion, which seems to have worked! Fingers crossed the fix sticks.
 
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chabig

macrumors G4
Sep 6, 2002
11,433
9,295
I don't think Recovery did anything for you. Nor did Disk Utility. All you had to do was reboot the machine.
 
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Achiever

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 23, 2008
536
214
I don't think Recovery did anything for you. Nor did Disk Utility. All you had to do was reboot the machine.
Perhaps, but worth noting I tried doing that several times before Recovery/DU repair, and it did not solve the problem.
 
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ignatius345

macrumors 604
Aug 20, 2015
7,581
12,938
Thank you for this suggestion, which seems to have worked! Fingers crossed the fix sticks.
Obviously just make sure you're making frequent backups. I think the newer APFS file structure makes it a lot easier to reinstall the system without nuking all your own data.
 
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