I was on the phone for another hour with a senior Apple advisor, again to no avail (but we got the Root User account removed).
He couldn't replicate the problem on his machines; the only solution he could suggest was to reinstall the OS and go from there — of course necessitating my purchase of an external drive to use with Time Machine (so half again as much as I paid for the iMac). I'm certainly not interested in major surgery for a tiny paper cut.
If this problem has no reasonable solution, then I guess I'll just have to put up with the inconvenience — but it's pretty shabby of Apple not to be able to deal with such a trivial problem. (And people wonder why I prefer OS 9.)
As I noted, I've been down all those roads. I've examined all varieties of file arrangements/views which are offered; so I am intimately aware of them. (After trying for over 5 minutes to access that first MacWorld article, it still wouldn't show up. Another 10 minutes and all that showed up was a page header. [There must be way too many graphics in the article; that's what usually slows down the process from all I can tell.] So I gave up.)
All folder views (icon/list/column) give the same result: New documents removed from the folder snap to upper left corner of the screen.
Last edited by grelber; 10/25/11 12:41 AM. Reason: Additional info
