My 2007 iMac is experiencing a strange problem. We shut it down normally before the Labor Day weekend. We just came back and now it boots to what looks like a fresh installation of Lion. Everything seems to be set to default. Several apps won't launch, several others are asking to be registered.
I retrofitted this machine in February 2011 by removing the optical drive and installing a 115 gig SSD for apps (labeled "Boot") and a 750 gig HDD for data (labeled "Data"). It's been running fine ever since, so I'm not sure what to make of the reset. It's almost as if its booting to the recovery partition. Both hard drives show the correct amount of space used vs. space available. I've rebooted while holding the option key and confirmed that I'm booting from the proper drive. I have a legitimate reason for not wanting to simply restore from an available backup, which I'd be happy to explain, but I didn't want to bog down the original post.
Any suggestions on what I can try before attempting to restore from an external backup? Any suggestions on what would cause a machine that's been running fine for months on end to suddenly boot to "default settings" upon reboot?
Thanks.
James
I retrofitted this machine in February 2011 by removing the optical drive and installing a 115 gig SSD for apps (labeled "Boot") and a 750 gig HDD for data (labeled "Data"). It's been running fine ever since, so I'm not sure what to make of the reset. It's almost as if its booting to the recovery partition. Both hard drives show the correct amount of space used vs. space available. I've rebooted while holding the option key and confirmed that I'm booting from the proper drive. I have a legitimate reason for not wanting to simply restore from an available backup, which I'd be happy to explain, but I didn't want to bog down the original post.
Any suggestions on what I can try before attempting to restore from an external backup? Any suggestions on what would cause a machine that's been running fine for months on end to suddenly boot to "default settings" upon reboot?
Thanks.
James
