Launcher: Category Buttons Not Appearing

When I create category folders inside the Launcher Items folder in my system folder, whose names start with the bullet character (Option-8), the Launcher does not display a new category button. What's am I doing wrong?
There is a bug in the Launcher previous to version 2.8. System 7.5 Update 2.0 includes Launcher 2.8, which fixes this issue. Users are encouraged to install System 7.5 Update 2.0 to fix this bug along with other fixes addressed in this update.

System 7.5 users may update the Launcher only by acquiring disks one and three of the System 7.5 Update 2.0 disk set and performing a custom install of the Launcher control panel.

Other workaround solution
This issue shows up in environments where creation of folders is very frequent. Eventually, the directory ID, known as dirID (an unseen folder counter in the file system) becomes too large for the Launcher to process correctly. With this understanding, the following solution could also be adopted.

Locate a folder on the hard drive that has been around for while and would therefore have low dirID number. Using a temporary folder -- the contents of the old folder and the Launcher's failing bullet-named category folder can be swapped, the folder names interchanged, and the folder locations reversed. The old folder with the lower dirID should be processed correctly as a Launcher category folder.

Published Date: Feb 18, 2012