HELP! Preferences gone!

[Trowaman]

okay here's the deal.

Everything was fine in my computer I am on dial up and was downloading the free 9/11 commission report from iTunes and left. Hwen I returned I disconnected from the internet and quit iChat AV.

I returned 10 minutes later, reconnected to the internet and restarted iChat. It was like I was opening the app for the first time. My saved away messages are gone as is all my addresses in my address book, calenders in iCal, Bookmarks in Safari, and preferences in all of those applications and Mail.

I have my contacts and calenders saved on my iPod but I have not resynced since the stuff disapeared on my computer. If you have any advice please help me. I am on 10.3.4 and it is running on a 17" iMac, 1 ghz with 256 mhz of RAM.

Please help me get my preferences back. I am not quitting iTunes yet, afraif I'd lose my album art or other preferences and I have not restart afraid I'll lose my finder prefs.

[yellow]

Did you run out of disk space? This is a typical occurence when you run out of disk space. For the sanity of OSX, always try and keep at least 2GBs of free disk space.

[Trowaman]

Did you run out of disk space? This is a typical occurence when you run out of disk space. For the sanity of OSX, always try and keep at least 2GBs of free disk space.

nope, still have 47 gigs free.

[Jalexster]

Have you got your background?
And can you access your home folder?

If you cannot access your home folder, then you have lost your access privalges. You home folder contains everything, like preferences and such.

You haven't lost your stuff, but Mac OS X, has just gone Ape**** and locked you out. Try restarting your Mac.

If that dosen't work, try repairing access permisions. I forgot how...

This problem happened to me twice, once when I tried fast user switching for the first time, and the second was when I tried to turn off filevault, because I heard it is dangerous.

I never touched filevault's settings again, and I never tried Fast User Switching again.

A restart fixed it for me.

[yellow]

If that dosen't work, try repairing access permisions. I forgot how...

Way 1: Use Disk Utility -> Select your boot drive -> Click on "Repair Disk Permissions" button
Way 2: Use the Terminal and type:

sudo diskutil repairpermissions /

HOWEVER, repairing permissions applies only to (certain) files with a Bill Of Materials found in /Library/Receipts/. So, we're talking system files and Applications. It does not descend into your home directory. In order to make sure everything is owned by you in your home directory, open Terminal and type:

chown -R yourshortusername ~yourshortusername

Where, naturally, "yourshortusername" is replaced by your short user name.

[Jalexster]

Try restarting your Mac first. That worked for me.