Desktop not showing newly-downloaded files?

Howdy all. I recently installed 10.5, fresh to a new drive and imported user data from the old. I'm having this nagging issue in that many files that I download to the Desktop don't show up on the Desktop space but are visible in my user's desktop folder via Finder. Getting these files to show up on the Desktop space itself usually requires me to quit Finder and relaunch it. Any ideas how to fix this? I've tried deleting the preference files for the Finder... no luck with that. Offhand, it seems that the Desktop simply isn't refreshing itself frequently enough, or failing to do so when new files are put on it.

Hmm... I'll have to play around with this and see - since the advent of Stacks, I've been happy that my downloads don't default to the desktop anymore. I'll check into it and get back to you if I figure it out (or if I don't see the same behavior).

I just tested this, and after simply changing my preference in Safari to download to the Desktop, it worked as expected... I'm guessing your problem lies somewhere else, and is not necessarily a 10.5 problem. Do you have any special "desktop" software loaded (like Desktoptopia or something)?

I don't have any special desktop software installed. I did some googling the other day and while my problem doesn't seem to be unique, I didn't find extensive complaints about it either. I'm now thinking the prob could be with Speed Download. I don't recall expressly re-installing it after installing 10.5... it was merely copied over along with user data from my 10.4 disk... so I think I'll try wiping that off and starting from scratch. I'll try that and do more extensive troubleshooting tonight and see if that solves the problem, or if I can narrow down the situations this occurs with. Either way, I suspect I'll start using Stacks and the Downloads folder idea since I generally prefer to have a clean desktop anyway and that will be a very convenient compromise.

I've reinstalled Speed Download, and the problem continues to occur. This also affects any file download through Safari also.

I've noticed that when I start a download via SD, the temporary file that SD creates shows up promptly on the Desktop space. When the download is complete, that file is deleted (as normal) and the completed file only shows in the Desktop folder.

I suspect this has something to do with that reported "Move" bug in Leopard, which was suggested somewhere when I was googling the other day. The downloaded file, once completed, is being moved from the temp folder or cache to the desktop, and although it gets to the actual Desktop folder intact, it doesn't show on the Desktop space itself. Why this doesn't affect everyone though is beyond me.

I see this problem when I rip DVDs with Handbrake. They showup in the Finder Window though. I've found that if I simply create a new empty folder on the desktop, they all suddenly appear at the same time the folder is created.

I just did some additional experimentation. The problem occurs on my wife's user account as well as mine, both of which were imported from the drive that Tiger was installed on. I just created a new, fresh user and the problem does not occur with that account. So... methinks there's some corrupt hidden pref file or something, somewhere. Time to dig REAL deep! I had some other odd problem when I went from Tiger on a G5 to Tiger on Intel that I narrowed down to some obscure hidden file in the user Library. I'm betting now something similar is going on here.

Just found one more monkey wrench twist to this here.... .zip files show up just fine. It's only DMG files that are failing to show up it seems.

Problem FINALLY solved. I couldn't get the problem to go away even by wiping out my user Library folder, so I looked at Speed Download again (which had been installed for All Users). Uninstalling it completely solved the problem. I don't quite get why what seems to be a bug with SD affected downloads that were handled by Safari, but clearly it did. SD installed a file to /Library/InputManagers and from some brief reading, there seem to be some issues with Leopard and Input Managers, so perhaps therein lays the culprit.

Anywho... thanks for the advice given.

Yazsoft has released a "Leopard compatibility script" for Speed Download - not sure if you want to bother giving it a try, but the information on it and a link to download it is Here.

Nah... I had run that script as part of my troubleshooting... no go. It's supposed to be included in the latest download of the software also and installing that didn't work out either. I've notified Yazsoft and they claim it's probably a problem with Leopard, which quite frankly I find incredulous since I can reliably reproduce this issue with 2 different installs of Leopard, one of which is wholly clean with a new user and no other apps/add-ons. They also suggested a possible corrupted cache or something, which I also am skeptical of since the problem disappears as soon as I remove SD from the computer. You'd think the problem would stick around if it was the cache or something like that.

I'd be curious if anyone can reproduce this. Just have to change SD's default download location to the Desktop, obviously, and turn off the sorting filters.