hey guys

i have about 12 icons on my desktop: about 8 are that folder that looks like paper (you know the one with the top right folded over) and with a little pic of a hard drive on it

and underneath it says a progra like: Messenger401.dmg

and the ohter ones are like images of blank hard drives (like what ur ipod looks like when it shows up on the desktop) with names under it again like: Firefox

and those only come up when i start up firefox or messenger

and every time i put them in documents or applications i cant start up the program

its really cluttering up my desktop and i never see people with these on their desktop!

thanks

It sounds like the .dmg files have opened up and left alot of "disks" on your desktop.

Basically dmg is more or less short for Disk Image (it might actually really actually stand for something else but thats what it pretty much is), so when you double click a .dmg file, it mounts a virtual disk on your desktop. Within that "disk" is usually the installer or the app itself for whatever you just downloaded. Almost always, the "disks" that are mounted are the same name as the .dmg file, just without the .dmg. For example lets say you have "Messenger.dmg" most of the times it opens up a folder or disk called "messenger" on your desktop.

So basically, whatever "disks" have been mounted from the .dmg files, you have to treat them just like an actual disk and eject them. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest way is to just drag it to the Trash, and the Trash icon will change to the Eject Icon, this way you know it is actually ejecting the file. You cannot delete a .dmg file until you unmount whatever "virtual disk" you opened up. Once you eject the virtual disks, you can then either delete the DMG files o back them up for future reference wherever you want.

Hope this maade sense, and maybe I explained to much, but I think you should get it. Good Luck

im not really asking if i can delete them i just want to know if i cant move them out of the desktop to another folder becuase every time i do that with say: messenger.dmg, it wont let me start messenger unless the particualr .dmg file is on ym desktop

thanks for the reply tho

Hmm that is really weird. It should not be doing that at all. What happens if you delete the dmg file after you copy the app over from the folder the dmg file mounted?

What you want to do is open a 'finder' window on your applications folder.

Double click on the Macintosh HD folder on your desktop.
Click applications on the side.

Now, double click on the dmg file. The main application (in this case MSN messenger) needs to simply be dragged from the 'disk' to the applications folder. It'll copy it over.

Finally, eject and trash the disk image. Then launch messenger from your application folder, or the dock if you have it in there.

Hope this helps...

hey thanks i got rid of the dmg files and it works fine but when i try moving the "blank hard drives" into application or something, they go there but the orignals stay on the screen

Exactly.
> Open .dmg File. (Might open on it's own after download)
> Whatever Folder or "Virtual Disk" this opens, drag contents of folder to wherever you like (As in the Example, Messenger to Applications)
> Delete (and/or Eject) everything related to the .dmg file (including the .dmg file itself, unless you are like me and back up .dmg files for Apps I might want to install after a format)
> Launch said App or whatever it may be (in example Messenger) from where you dragged it over to.

Basically to sum up what aldo and myself are saying the easiest way I can...

When you drag the file, application, whatever it may be, over to whatever folder on your hard drive you see fit, it is then independent of the .dmg file that mounted it. If you just launch an app (as an example) from the folder the .dmg mounted, it is looking for the .dmg file before it launches, and if it does not find it, it will not work. This still does not sound right to me honestly, I did not think this way the way it was, but I am a creature of habit and I always copy whatever the .dmg mounts, so maybe this is indeed how it does work.

BAsically, Anytime you open a .dmg file, you want to copy whatever it's contents are to wherever you want, to make life easy.

As aldo said, I hope this helps.

As aldo and DirtyLarry have already covered, what you see on the desktop (the white drives with the slots and the corresponding file icons with the hard drives on them) are disk images. The white drive with the slot is the actual mounted disk. This disk originates from the .DMG file, or the disk image. If you ever had any experience with Alcohol 120% on Windows, it's a similar process, but built into Mac OS X.

The contents of the mounted disk are what you want to copy over to the Applications folder on your hard drive. Trying to drag the actual mounted disk into the Applications folder will only create an alias to the disk, so it's still dependent on the disk image file. When you've copied over the contents of the mounted disk then you can proceed to eject the mounted disk and then delete the disk image file.

Very simple process really. As well, most mounted disks have special backgrounds or read-me files to tell you what to do with the files inside of the mounted disk (see the attached screenshot). As well, there are some disk images that will auto-extract their contents to the desktop and eject the mounted disk and delete the disk imag. This is actually what Apple recommends developers do with their disk images as to not confuse newcomers. Unfortunately, only a handful of developers actually follow this rule (Panic is one of them).