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AlMac24

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Kit:- 20" 2.4 Ghz Aluminium iMac: 4Gb RAM: Mac OS 10.5.1

The symptoms: Something odd has happened to my permissions. Not had any problems up to now as Macaroni seems to keep everything neat andtidy. If I create (eg) a Textedit doc, it saves it, but I cannot save any subsequent edits. Also, in iTunes, I can change a field (eg artist) once - but then cannot change anything else. Finally, some apps are just not available - with an error message saying I don't have permission to modify them.

The cause: I can't pin it down, but it became an issue sometime after (1) I loaded VirusBarrier X5 and NetBarrier X5 and (2) after I bought DiskWarrior and did a rebuild. I've used VB and NB before this new version without a problem, so didn't worry about upgrading.

The attempted fix: tried removing NB & VB, zapping PRAM, repairing permissions (by Macaroni, Disk Utility, DU from boot DVD, reset ACLs and Permissions from OS X Boot DVD) running DiskWarrior - all to no avail. In fact, I now get the flashing '?' on a folder at bootup, but can get in if I hold the Alt key when starting up. I changed the Permissions on my home folder and that solved most issues, but not the inability to run some applications. Also - obviously not the correct solution!

The next steps
: will check my latest CCC backup tonight and plan to either restore that, or do an archive & install of Leopard (then prob update to 10.5.1 from the downloaded combo upgrade rather than the automatic upgrade as I understand that might help).

My question: Sorry to be long-winded, but my question is:- will restoring the backup from CCC sort the permissions out? Will doing a new install sort it out? Or is the only answer be a total clean install?
 
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