no desktop icons and finder doesnt seem to work...please help

[MacInWin]

sammsousa, if you can get a big, empty hd to use tomorrow, that would be fantastic. Given that you have a full 1TB drive, you'll probably need a 1TB or bigger drive for this to work well. It's going to be slow if you have to use USB2, so Firewire would be better, or if your Mac has it, USB3. Format of the drive doesn't matter, as long as you are allowed to erase it completely. What cradom is going to work you through is moving your files to that external drive through terminal commands, then you can reinstall on the internal drive and copy back from that external the files you really need and maybe move the files you don't to that external drive of yours, although it doesn't have that much room left. Once that's done, you'll be back in business.

 

[cradom]

Ok, I'm out and about whenever you want to get started. Leave a post and I'll get an email even if I'm not logged in here.

 

[toMACsh]

Ok.
Log into a good account that works.
You're going to need to copy a lot of stuff to the external drive to make room.
If you can, start copying things to the external...apps you don't need/use, other files you have access to in that account.
Do that and we'll go from there.

Maybe make the things he has to type in Terminal bold...?

 

[cradom]

sammsousa, ready whenever you are.
I'm going to try and make this copy/paste in Terminal so I need some information:
What is the shortname for the bad account? The name of the user folder.
What is the name of the good account?
What is the exact name of the external drive?
Want to save bookmarks? What browser do you use?
Want to save mail? Using Mail?
Going to try and copy everything EXCEPT the Library folder. This is where most problems arise, corrupt .plist files and whatnot.
If I can get these answers I can make commands you can copy and paste into Terminal reducing the chance of typos and errors.
This isn't that hard to do so don't get discouraged. I just hope you can find enough free space on an external drive.
If you can, from the good account, go to /Users, click on the bad home folder and do a Get Info on it. Should show the size of the folder. Will help in determining how much space you need.

 

[sammsousa]

hey cradom. first of all, im sorry for the long response, but i was waiting all day for my friend to get of work so i could meet him for the external HD. but the worst part is that aperently i cant store anything on it because he has it setup for windows, and i obviously cant delete his stuff. i guess ill just have to work with the free space i have. so now i also can say 'I'm out and about whenever you want to get started'
now to your questions:
the name of the bad account is: sammsousa
the name of the good account is: samms
the name of the external HD is: TOSHIBA EXT
as far as bookmarks, i use chrome as a browser, and my bookmarks are synked with it.
mail app i dont use.

what exactly is in the library folder? hopefully not music and so...?

i just did 'get info' on the broken accounts folder and it says only 261 MBs (?!?!) there is no way this is right, right?

 

[cradom]

i just did 'get info' on the broken accounts folder and it says only 261 MBs (?!?!) there is no way this is right, right?

Highly unlikely. I just tried this on my wife's computer where I have an account and it said 3 bytes for 11 items so that didn't work

Ok, since you don't use Mail and don't need to copy bookmarks we're going to delete the Library folder. We don't need to copy it.
Open Terminal and type:
cd /Users/sammsousa
That shouldn't give an error but if it does type:
sudo cd /Users/sammsousa
It will ask for a password. Type in your login password for this account, not the bad one.
It looks like nothing's happening but it is, you cant see the password going in. That's normal.

Now type:
sudo rm -rf Library
This will delete the Library folder (no, no music in there).

Edit: note everything in bold can be copy/pasted into Terminal.

 

[cradom]

Now we're going to back out of the bad account and back into /Users.
cd ..
If you type ls you should see the names of Home folders here. (That's a L and an S, lowercase)
Now we're going to try and copy. Type:
sudo cp -R sammsousa /Volumes/'TOSHIBA EXT'/sammsousa
This will copy the entire sammsousa folder with everything in it to the external drive, assuming there's enough space.
The -R switch means it will continue to copy even if there are errors. So after it's finished (it'll take a WHILE), go into the external in Finder and check things. Make sure all is there as far as you know.
You should have all your folders in there including Documents, Music, Movies Etc., Plus everything that was loose in your Home folder for that account.
Note, This probably will not copy invisible files.

 

[sammsousa]

after following the instructions, this is what appeared:

rm: Library/Application Support: Directory not empty
rm: Library: Directory not empty

 

[cradom]

Notice the external drive's name has single quotes. This is because there is a space in the name.

 

[sammsousa]

what i was talking about was what appeared after following the first post!

 

[cradom]

?? After the first post? What?

 

[sammsousa]

Open Terminal and type:
cd /Users/sammsousa
That shouldn't give an error but if it does type:
sudo cd /Users/sammsousa
It will ask for a password. Type in your login password for this account, not the bad one.
It looks like nothing's happening but it is, you cant see the password going in. That's normal.

Now type:
sudo rm -rf Library
This will delete the Library folder (no, no music in there).

Edit: note everything in bold can be copy/pasted into Terminal.

this is what i did so far

 

[MacInWin]

Craig, I think he was pointing to post 67. You two posted at the same minute. He got an error message on the rm command.

 

[cradom]

Ok, hopefully most of the stuff in Library is gone.
Follow the next post to copy to the external.
Some of the Library folder will be copied, no problem.

Edit: yeah Jake figured it out right after I posted. Thanks.

 

[MacInWin]

Also, I think he said the external wasn't empty, so it might be tricky to cp back just what he is cp-ing over now unless you mkdir a place for it. Just thinking out loud...

 

[cradom]

IF you add a / at the end of the source folder it only copies the contents.
So we can cp back into samms ok.

 

[MacInWin]

Grasshopper meekly returns to his corner....

 

[cradom]

Hey, don't run off! I'm not turning down help. Every little bit helps (the big bits too).

 

[cradom]

Dang, wish I'd thought to use the -v switch on the cp so he could see what was happening while it copied.
Sometimes looking at a mostly blank Terminal screen you get to thinking "is it working?".
Boring.

 

[sammsousa]

first of all sorry for the taking a while, terminal is a bit confusing, even though cradom explains it pretty well!

im right before typing in this comand
sudo cp -R sammsousa /Volumes/'TOSHIBA EXT'/sammsousa

but im now wondering if i can choose certain folders to copy to my ext HD, because there is lots of stuff that i can easily reinstall/ditch. so i would rather use the space to save stuff i really need.