opps-loaded desktop with 678 still pictures

HELP- I accidently click and dragged my photo's to my desktop when I was working on an Imovie. Now my desktop is filled with this files ( some say still and some say clips). I have a LaCie 250 gb harddrive hooked to the machine, fyi. How can I clean this mess up.

I dont think I have enough space to do anything right now. Keep getting the rainbow swirl..... nothing happening!!!

A little known featurelet is that, if you do that, just press command-Z and it will undo the move. As it is, just select the desktop, press command-A, then command-click the items you don't want to move (your hard disk, for instance). You can then move them wherever.

it will eventually highlight the items on the desktop.. but there is such a delay I don't know what is getting highlighted.. if that makes sense, but then they wont move to the trash when I click-drag???

select everything, then just command click to deselect the macitosh hd etc.. if you not sure drag it to the trash and you can then see them in a different view like a list etc..

hope this helps

I can get the desktop items highlighted but i was only able to "unselect" one item.. it just sits there....probably a space/memory issue at this point i would assume.

any other suggestions?

Don't select them from the Desktop itself. Open a Finder window and choose Desktop from the Sidebar. Then it will be easier for you to select/deselect your items from a window rather than the "actual" Desktop.

I was able to do that from the sidebar but it takes forever to highlight them all and then I could only deselect one item.. it never scrolled down for me to click any others.. I waited for it to respond to my commands for over an hour.

I have a diskwarrior CD.. can't locate the Imac install disk - though I havent really looked. I obviously don't know much about this machine.. any other ideas?

what happens if I trash everything on the desktop ( including HD) will it really delete it? Just afraid if I do that then I wont be able to move it out of the trash if I have to... what a mess!

Remember when you place a file system, be it a CDROM, a virtual disk or a disk partition, it umounts the file system. I don't believe you will be able to place the system disk into the trash, since it has files that are in use.

Open a terminal:
cd ~/Desktop
mkdir ~/Pictures/temp
mv -v *.jpg ~/Pictures/temp/

This changes your directory to the desktop, then makes a folder in your Pictures directory called "temp", then copies every file with the .jpg extension to said newly-made folder. Change the .jpg to whatever you need for the other files in the last command, and re-run it.

EDIT: For the .jpg, make sure that the files are .jpg, as they might be .jpeg, .JPG or .JPEG (Assuming that they are Jpeg files)

Thanks I will try that

is there a keybd shortcut for getting a terminal?

My machine is really slow.. I tried to open one and left for a few hours and its still not open

Now, don't quote me on this or anything, as I'm not entirely sure. But if the slowness is being caused by all of these files sitting on the dektop, try logging in as another user (If one exists), opening a terminal from that account, and type in:
login <username>

This will log you in as the one you are trying to move the pictures for, then do the commands from above.

Of course, you could always just select a few at a time to move them. That way you wouldn't have to wait for hours to have them all selected.

Of course, you could always just select a few at a time to move them. That way you wouldn't have to wait for hours to have them all selected.

Thank You

Thanks to everyone who helped! Logging in as a new user and doing the unix commands in terminal fixed my desktop.. Appreciate all the help!

You're welcome! I was wondering how this turned out for you, and it's nice to hear you got it fixed!