Many Lost Preferences

M

msagal

Registered
It started last night when I noticed that iPhoto Library Manager all of a sudden didn't know where any of the iPhoto libraries were. Then Graphic Converter seemed to lose my registration. Then Mail lost all my accounts (fortunately all the mail is still there in ~/Library/Mail and I have been able to recover most of it). Then I noticed that the Finder windows were back to their default Toolbar settings.

All of the other apps seem to be ok. iPhoto, iCal, WebPics, iMovie, QuickTime Pro, iTunes all seem to be unaffected.

I ran Repair Permissions but it didn't seem to fix anything.

Any ideas on what went wrong?
 
Look in the Library folder in your home folder for a folder called Preferences. That's where your apps' preferences live.

Check to make sure that folder and its contents belongs to you. Click on the icon. Press Apple-I (command I) or "get info" from the Finder's "File" menu.

If you need more specifics, let us know.

Good luck!

Doug
 
It's not a battery problem, is it? This only applies to desktop computers, not laptops. If the PRAM battery runs out of juice, your PRAM will not do its job and certain settings will get lost.

Were you affected by the blackouts?
 
The PRAM battery will not affect the settings mentioned. It stores very little. Just enough to boot up and get the screen going, basically.

I don't have a definitive answer for you either, msagal, but let me share a little anecdote. I recently lost a bunch of preferences because I thought it would be a good idea to throw away the "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist" file after ProjectBuilder bitched at me about it.

The effect of this was apparently to corrupt my system's Virtual Memory (VM) storage files which I had relocated using a utility called "SwapCop."

If the system loses track of the VM storage all kinds of havoc ensues. Essentially every open application becomes a bull in a china shop, corrupting its open files and trouncing the volume catalog.

So I ended up with a bunch of corrupted preferences, a number of corrupted Mailbox files, and basically had to do a reinstall of my system.

Now in my case it was just a boneheaded move on my part that led to the system falloing apart, but it's not unheard-of for this kind of thing to happen spontaneously.

You should certainly repair your hard drive, preferably by booting from your Mac OS X install disk and running Disk Utility from the installer menu.

As a precaution you might try renaming your personal Preferences folder and then rebooting, which will do two things: (1) recreate default preferences for anything you start, including the system, and (2) allow you to restore preferences for applications that come up and really really need the old settings.

As far as your iPhoto Library goes, the data for that lives in your Pictures folder, in a folder named iPhoto Library. The AlbumData.xml file and the Albums folder are the most critical. As far as I know there is no automated way to recover this information if it becomes corrupted. However, you should be able to at least go through the picture folders (named by year) and locate your images, then re-add them to your iPhoto library by dragging them directly onto the iPhoto window in Organize mode. Before you do so I recommend making a full backup of your iPhoto Library folder and then renaming the iPhoto Library folder to something like "iPhoto Library (old)." All this should be done without iPhoto running, of course.

Sorry to hear about your situation. This stuff can be a bitch to recover from. The best recommendation anyone can make is of course to make regular backups. Especially back up your Home folder.

Good luck!
 
I had the same problem when my HD space went low. I've talked about this in an earlier thread here somewhere. My guess is that you need at least as much free HD-space as you have RAM installed to avoid this problem.
 
You need more disk space available at any given time in OS X than in 9 because of automatic virtual memory, cache files, log files, and a host of other reasons that your system sucks down your space. Bit of a bummer.

BTW—I don't drink, if you were referring to me.
 
Sorry to pick on you, arden. I like to see my name in lights as much as the next guy, but your frequent vapid posts just peeve me. I'll just add you to my ignore list and move on.
 
Thanks for all the help here! The common thread is low disk space. My wife was working on an iMovie project right at that time and I did notice that the space was down to about 400 MB on the disk (less than my RAM). I'm guessing that's the cause. A friend of mine also mentioned this. So I've made some space available.

By the way, all the iPhoto Libraries are fine. They're all there and I've reset iPhoto Library Manager and all is good.

The scariest part was the mail. I thought it was all deleted but another thread talked about how to get that back. I don't think I'm all the way there yet but I have most of it now. I'll post a message on the net forums with more detail on that specific problem.

I'll watch that disk space more closely in the future and do some housecleaning. Thanks again to all.
 
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