All files are lost after a reinstall

lurker18 · Jul 14, 2011

I'm sure this has been asked a million times, but I'm in a bit of a panic here. I had to do a reinstall (Leopard) after Safari got a bug and froze up. I'm sure I selected archived reinstall, but after all was said and done, I've got nothing. iPhoto, iTunes are the two most important and they are no where to be seen. I did a scan with Stellar Pheonix and there are 186 GB or recoverable files.

I am no computer wizard, but is there anything that I can do to get the previous system back? If this is a lost hope then I am not going to throw money away for some kid to look at and say there is nothing to be done.

Also, after the reinstall, my iPhoto and Office are totally gone. Is Leopard and upgrade and need an older OS to get everything back.

Lifeisabeach · Jul 14, 2011

lurker18 said:
I'm sure this has been asked a million times, but I'm in a bit of a panic here. I had to do a reinstall (Leopard) after Safari got a bug and froze up. I'm sure I selected archived reinstall, but after all was said and done, I've got nothing. iPhoto, iTunes are the two most important and they are no where to be seen. I did a scan with Stellar Pheonix and there are 186 GB or recoverable files.

I am no computer wizard, but is there anything that I can do to get the previous system back? If this is a lost hope then I am not going to throw money away for some kid to look at and say there is nothing to be done.

Also, after the reinstall, my iPhoto and Office are totally gone. Is Leopard and upgrade and need an older OS to get everything back.

iTunes and iPhoto are part of OS X and auto-installed regardless of what install options you chose. If your system is booting into OS X, then you are almost certainly looking in the wrong place. Be sure you are looking in your root Applications folder:
Macintosh HD/Applications

and not in your USER Applications folder:
yourhomefolder/Applications

Also try pressing COMMAND-Spacebar to activate Spotlight, then search for iTunes and see if it gets a hit.

lurker18 · Jul 14, 2011

Thanks, I will try that when I get home.

If by chance, I did accidentally do a clean install (I sure hope I didn't), are these files lost?

Lifeisabeach · Jul 14, 2011

lurker18 said:
Thanks, I will try that when I get home.

If by chance, I did accidentally do a clean install (I sure hope I didn't), are these files lost?

Your music and photos would be if you had no backup, but the apps themselves are installed with OS X no matter how you install it.

lurker18 · Jul 15, 2011

I took some time last night and it seems I did an archived install, but with a new user account, so I am now locked out of the stuff I want. I went into some files, unlocked and changed the user allowances for my new account, and can get into almost all I need.

Is there any way to wipe out the new user account and go back to my old origional account?

And I still have a problem with iPhoto, it did not load up on the reinstall. Should it not be one of the icons in the dock? Used Leopard install disk for this and it looks like all the iLife stuff (iMovie, iDvd, etc) was left off. Is this a download after the fact? It has been so long since I've had to monkey with this stuff I forgot what I was doing.

Lifeisabeach · Jul 15, 2011

lurker18 said:
I took some time last night and it seems I did an archived install, but with a new user account, so I am now locked out of the stuff I want. I went into some files, unlocked and changed the user allowances for my new account, and can get into almost all I need.

Is there any way to wipe out the new user account and go back to my old origional account?

How to get files from a previous home directory after Archive and Install
There are specific instructions down the page for doing this. Be VERY CAREFUL when logged in as root!!!!

And I still have a problem with iPhoto, it did not load up on the reinstall. Should it not be one of the icons in the dock? Used Leopard install disk for this and it looks like all the iLife stuff (iMovie, iDvd, etc) was left off. Is this a download after the fact? It has been so long since I've had to monkey with this stuff I forgot what I was doing.

You should have iPhoto. Is it not in the Applications folder? If iLife came with your computer (it has a more advanced version of iPhoto), you will need to install that separately. It'd be on one of your original discs. Reference the manual that came with your Mac.

EDIT: But regardless of the version that comes with iLife, you should still have iPhoto in the Apps folder.

lurker18 · Jul 15, 2011

Looks like 100 buck to fix this will be money well spent. I'm sure it is not all that hard to do, but I would rather have it done correctly than me making it worse.

Lessons learned.