Lost personal settings, e-mail, bookmarks, history...

Macbook Pro with 10.6.7 - working great until just now.

I ejected two hard drives (photos only) and took off the external monitor, shut down, traveled. Once I turn my mac on, everything is reset like for a new user. The application launch bar at the bottom is huge, none of my programs are showing in it. Thunderbird has no inbox or log in info for my e-mail, Firefox lost all history and bookmarks, desktop reverted to that purple starfield.

What might have happened? My library folder is still there, though I can't tell if it's just a newly generated, most things have todays date on them though, but maybe just because I started firefox and thunderbird, which makes me suspicious. I did not change user names, directory names or anything at all, just shut down w/o any errors. I have a backup, but it's not with me, also don't have the install disk for OSX with me. I might be able to get some files from the backup sent to me (if the external disk can be read from a PC) and I can get it physically in two weeks, but much rather fix this now.

I spent quite some time googling, but so far no luck, I'll keep on it and post if I find a solution.

Thanks so much for any and all help!

I'm not sure what happened, but at a guess I'd say you "ejected" those hard drives incorrectly, screwing up the directory. When OS X runs across a user directory it can't read properly, it creates a new user so it can complete the boot process.

I'd avoid working with the machine as much as possible until you can get home and restore from your backup, which will be the safest way to correct this problem.

I ejected them via the finder's eject disk icon next to the drives. They only contain my photos, nothing else (one is a backup of the other) and ejected fine, once I unplugged them I got no error message.

Can it be that my library got screwed up or deleted? I don't know where all the user settings are stored, I think in the library? There is one under Places, and one inside my user icon (the little house). I'm trying to find out where the library is supposed to be.

I have a full drive backup done with super duper at home, so I'm not too worried, but I'd rather avoid unnecessary work and I carried this thing half around the world to - well - use it ;-)

But thanks for the input, anything helps!

Also, does anybody know if the different library folders are basically the same? My machine has me as user and admin and a separate test account (also admin) I created a long time ago but never used since then, was for fixing some kind of problem.

It seems to me that most files (if not all) in the library under my user profile are new, whereas the files in the other libraries (one under "places", one just on macintosh HD, one in the system folder) have dates from different times. Could I just copy one of those into my user area and give that a try? Maybe rename the one that's there to library-1 or something, then see what happens? I don't want to screw the machine up more than it is and really don't know much about all the things in the library folders.

All the stuff under Places are aliases. Don't mess with your library (or ANY folder named Library).

You're perfectly fine to use the computer as-is for "nothing permanent" (ie web surfing), but I would only check your email through a web portal and wouldn't store anything in this new "temporary" user account -- store it on a thumb drive or some such instead.

In the meantime, you can do a little maintenance. Run Disk Utility's "Repair Permissions" and maybe download the proper version (for your OS version) of OnyX (free) and run the standard stuff (ie don't change any checkboxes).

Then log out, and see if there's a "new" account in addition to your "regular" account and try logging into your regular account.

thanks, I did those things and ran onyx (nice software!) but still no luck. I guess my Library got lost or corrupted somehow? I won't have access to my backup for at least until the weekend, probably not until next week. Since the machine works otherwise I can get by, but why (and what) this happened? I guess I'll have to see that I always have a backup of my library folder on my HD somewhere, just in case.....

It sounds as though your Library folder may have been dragged into another directory, moving it from where it is supposed to be. When that happens, the Mac will recreate the Library folder and start from scratch. I'd do a find for Library, see if you have a folder in the wrong place and, if so, move it back where it belongs.

thanks, I'll do that as well! Certainly possible...

I'm just not sure, there are several libraries I can find. One under my user name, that's the new one. On if I just look at Macintosh HD, there is an applications folder and then a library folder, and then there's one in the system folder one level further in.

I can't find any info if they are all supposed to be where they are, or if one or the other may be my accidentally moved one, any idea how to identify the Library folder that ties to my user name?

Thanks!

Sounds as though they are where they are supposed to be.
/Library
/System/Library
/Users/username/Library (this is the one that would hold your settings)

If a Library folder is somewhere other than one of those three locations, then it's not in the right place, most likely, and could be the file you're searching for. Don't forget to check the Trash in case it was removed accidentally.

thanks, I thought so. I'll just have to wait until next week, when I have access to my backup again. I can still work with the machine, that's the main thing

why/how this happened is not clear to me, the trash is empty as I just emptied it out, who knows if I moved that in there by mistake.