My girlfriend has a 15" Macbook Pro running 10.4.8 (I have a Powerbook)
This morning when she turned her computer on (she usually lets it sleep but last night just for fun shut it down) OS X had returned to its factory state ... i.e. desktop clean, desktop background aqua blue, dock magnification reset, etc. More disturbing was that iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, etc. had all reset themselves too, with libraries now empty. She panicked, but when she checked through finder she was relieved to find all the documents still there, just no longer linked to program libraries, Mail inbox or whatever.
She played around a bit, set her desktop back to a photo and things like that, then decided to restart (no idea why, especially not having backed up anything). When OS X came back up, all documents, music, photos, emails, etc. had vanished, even from in Finder. She freaked out, turned her computer off and called me, but not before noticing that Macintosh HD had the same amount of free space as always.
I assume that the data is still there on the hard drive, but short of connecting to her computer in target disk mode (which I can't do when she's 300km away) I don't know how to recover it. Also, I have no idea what caused this and how to fix Mac OS X, which sounds possibly unrecoverable. Would repairing disk permissions be worth trying? Or would it be best to leave the computer off until she can get it to a technician next week? Any other suggestions?
Finally, though I doubt this could have caused the problem, she fairly recently deleted iChat (don't ask me why).
Please help!
Jimothys
This morning when she turned her computer on (she usually lets it sleep but last night just for fun shut it down) OS X had returned to its factory state ... i.e. desktop clean, desktop background aqua blue, dock magnification reset, etc. More disturbing was that iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, etc. had all reset themselves too, with libraries now empty. She panicked, but when she checked through finder she was relieved to find all the documents still there, just no longer linked to program libraries, Mail inbox or whatever.
She played around a bit, set her desktop back to a photo and things like that, then decided to restart (no idea why, especially not having backed up anything). When OS X came back up, all documents, music, photos, emails, etc. had vanished, even from in Finder. She freaked out, turned her computer off and called me, but not before noticing that Macintosh HD had the same amount of free space as always.
I assume that the data is still there on the hard drive, but short of connecting to her computer in target disk mode (which I can't do when she's 300km away) I don't know how to recover it. Also, I have no idea what caused this and how to fix Mac OS X, which sounds possibly unrecoverable. Would repairing disk permissions be worth trying? Or would it be best to leave the computer off until she can get it to a technician next week? Any other suggestions?
Finally, though I doubt this could have caused the problem, she fairly recently deleted iChat (don't ask me why).
Please help!
Jimothys
