I've lost my personal settings in OSX. help please.

[Zianac]

My MBP crashed yesterday, and I seem to have lost all of my personal settings... While some of these problems aren't that bad, mainly because I think firefox works faster now, I'd like to restore what I had before. My dock even reverted to what it was when I had first purchased the computer. My itunes library came up as corrupt (this had me worried until I saw that I still had all of my music). If anyone knows how to recover my old settings please let me know.

[mad jew]

What were you doing before it crashed? Did you try renaming any of the system folders (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854)? :)

[Zianac]

I was trying to come back out of sleep mode (the computer was in sleep mode for at least an hour) When I opened the MBP it gave me the usual sounds but the screen remained blank. Then I waited 10 minutes to see if anything would pop up. After that I tried to close the MBP hoping it would go back to sleep, and I could try to wake it from sleep again. After about 5 minutes the light on the front never went back to pulsating so I held the power button till it completely turned off. I turned it back on and... That's when all my settings were gone.

[macjack1]

Have a look in /Users and see if your data is still there.
And were you using FileVault (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25695)?

-mj

[Zianac]

All of my files are still here... It's just that all my settings are changed... my dock was reset... I lost my bookmarks in Safari and Firefox. and Itunes said my library was corrupt... Rebuilding all of my settings isn't that big of a deal... but if I could get them back, it'd be nice... I'd like to have my old playlists back and stuff, ya know? and yes I'm using filevault

[Doctor X]

Well . . . this may be like "well you backed up your hard drive, yes?" after you have just had your HD die . . . but something to help in the future. With my Old Widdle Mac sometimes if I let it go to sleep for a long time--especially on battery--it will not wake up as you describe. Sounds like it is alive, but the screen will not come on. I have force started as you suggest, but I have never lost the information--like FF bookmarks. I have File Vault.

So . . . screen shot your bookmarks. Smarter people HERE may tell you how to make a copy of whatever it is that stores those. Anyways, when I have had to reinstall for a bad RAM . . . then a deceased HD . . . it saved a lot of time looking up things. You may be able to do the same thing for settings.

Best of luck.

--J.D.

[mad jew]

...but if I could get them back, it'd be nice... I'd like to have my old playlists back and stuff, ya know? and yes I'm using filevault


Follow the useful link of wise ol' macjack1. Get everything backed up first though, just in case.