Accidentally scanned OSX from Bootcamp and OSX Reset

[Chross]

Oh god, I've screwed up my mac beyond repair and I failed to utilize time machine based on the price of the time capsule. I'm a college student and simply cannot afford a $250 piece of hardware that I may never use. But now I'm paying for my arrogance in assuming I'd never need it. Sometimes I really hate myself.

I have, somehow, reset my entire OSX. The Dock is now huge, all of my icons are now reset to the default ones when I originally bought the Macbook Pro. The software is still there but the icons have been reset. The icon no longer bounces when I open it.

And I know exactly why. I was in Windows through bootcamp doing routine maintenance and decided to do a full scan using Microsoft Security Essentials. I forgot to have it ignore the E:/ drive which is where MacOSX installed. It must have got 25% through scanning it before I realized it. I don't even know if that can cause a problem but it obviously did. I booted into OSX just to double check everything was ok. It loaded fine, all icons where there and seemed like everything was ok. Except the icons weren't bouncing when I opened up an application even though it was checked in the preferences. This frustrated me so I rebooted again to see if that would fix the issue and now here I am. Completely back to factory defaults. My software is still there but the Dock reset itself and it seems as if other things reset. I'm doomed. So how do I start a reinstall process? Insert the Snow Leapord disk?

I'm worried because I have Parrallels 6 and if I have to reinitiate a bootcamp then I'm going to have to go buy another full non-upgrade version of Windows 7. Christ, my life really is terrible at the moment. Somebody please tell me I'm overreacting and focusing on the worst possible scenario.

 

[angelwatt]

Try running repair permissions from Disk Utility. You can also try deleting the Dock preferences so it resets.

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Worst case would be trying an archive and install. I'm not sure if that can be done while ignoring Bootcamp or not as I've never used Bootcamp.

 

[Chross]

Ok I think I lucked out. I trashed that file you mentioned and then ran Onyx and had it do EVERYTHING. I think it worked. The dock reset so I'll have to rebuild it but other than that I think it's fine. Is there any way I can double check everything? I'm really paranoid about my MacBook. It's my baby and I want to make sure there isn't something out of order that could be gimping the system.

Also, unrelated issue: Parallels had originally placed a "Windows Applications" folder in the dock. It was nice because I could see everything I had and when I clicked on one it would launch parallels automatically and launch that program. That folder is gone. Anyway I can get it back?

 

[lewis82]

Also, unrelated issue: Parallels had originally placed a "Windows Applications" folder in the dock. It was nice because I could see everything I had and when I clicked on one it would launch parallels automatically and launch that program. That folder is gone. Anyway I can get it back?

Search for that folder in Spotlight (magnifier icon at the top right), navigate to where it is located and drag it to the Dock (near the Trash).

 

[gnasher729]

Oh god, I've screwed up my mac beyond repair and I failed to utilize time machine based on the price of the time capsule. I'm a college student and simply cannot afford a $250 piece of hardware that I may never use. But now I'm paying for my arrogance in assuming I'd never need it. Sometimes I really hate myself.

For the future: You don't need Time Capsule. You can buy any cheap old external USB hard drive and it will work just fine with Time Machine. The only advantage of Time Capsule is: You are always connected to it and don't have to plug the hard drive into your MacBook (no advantage with an iMac or MacPro), and you can hide it away so a burglar won't steal your Mac _and_ your backup drive.

But you _need_ a backup drive. The drive in your Macintosh _will_ fail one day. Every hard drive in the world will fail eventually.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

+1 for gnasher's post. Any USB HDD will do. I wouldn't necessarily go for an "old" one, but even a brand new on @ 1 TB can be had for under $100.

Also, if you had to reinstall Windows, why would you have to purchase another copy? The first one you purchased should work just fine.