Mac OS X Can’t Copy and Paste, Drag and Drop and Spotlight’s Dead

hey faii. long time no talk. so they revealed that schumi is stig haha. how are you man?

HI faii,
I have exactly the same problem – cannot paste, cannot drag and drop and spotlight not working. Mac OS 10.5.7 installed. But, I tried your trick in the Terminal and it still doesnt work! I tried reparing diskpermissions, verify disk was ok, Tech Tool Deluxe, Apple hardware/software check – no signs of anything wrong. Also used ClamXav to check for viruses.
Maybe I am not savvy enough to use the Terminal properly, can you give any more tips? How do I know that it actually did the thing you recommend here? I got “file exist” after i entered my password, but after i did the chmod there was no feedback. then i did “exit” and also restarted the computer, but still same problem.

Thanks,

Hi Linda,

apologies for the delayed reply. returned from overseas today.

my guess is that accidentally deleting the file (i was clearing up unwanted files several days back) or having a programme that didn’t behave itself was the reason for the accidental deletion of my temp folder. it is used as a cache by the OS for everything from copying and pasting to the trashcan.

from what you’ve mentioned i understand you’ve created the temp folder and changed the permissions. did you follow each of the steps and ensured there were wasn’t a typo with the second command? the first time i tried it it did not work because i was fooling around with other solutions involving the terminal.

how about trying it out after a fresh restart? just launch the terminal after logging in. don’t forget to reboot as well.

i didn’t receive confirmation on Terminal upon using the ‘sudo chmod 1777 /private/tmp’ command. don’t worry about that.

basically disk permissions and the hardware/software diagnoses do not work, and it most probably isn’t caused by a virus.

i hope this works for you! :)

btw (for other readers),

The sticky bit 't' means:
'do not let anyone delete this folder or change it's permissions'">

I typed in everything you wrote but nothing. Can you help me with this issue? It’s such a drag since I have to be using FCP to copy paste timecodes. :S

Thanks in advance.

If I knew where you were, I really would kiss your feet. You are my saviour!!!

You ‘da man! That worked. It pays to pay attention when the OS asks  you for a password when you go to delete something.