While working in Microsoft Word my screen flashed and all items on the desktop dissapeared. After freaking out, I looked around and found they had been moved to a folder on my hard drive called "Updaters". Also, all of my system preferences were reset to factory defaul. WTF?
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Desktop items moved to Updaters Folder
- Thread starter loverton13
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Weird. Tell us a little bit more about your machine and what exactly you'd been doing. What other apps were running? What version of the MacOS were you running? 
Desktop items moved to Updates Folder - getting worse!
Microsoft Word. I was using Microsoft Word and I suspect it has something to do with that becuase when I googled "Updaters Folder" everything that came up was related to that nasty program.
Anyway here's the rundown: I am on a G4 450, running osX v.10.3.9. I was also using Quark 6, Entourage, Safari.
So it seems like my computer has sort of createdanother user because everything I use went into this "Updaters" folder. Even all my iTunes music, copies of Fonts, etc.
I'm probably just going to reinstall the system software but I'd really like to try to save some of what I've lost i.e. all my e-mail contacts, saved attachments
It's also just so weird I'd kind of like to figure out what's going on.
Microsoft Word. I was using Microsoft Word and I suspect it has something to do with that becuase when I googled "Updaters Folder" everything that came up was related to that nasty program.
Anyway here's the rundown: I am on a G4 450, running osX v.10.3.9. I was also using Quark 6, Entourage, Safari.
So it seems like my computer has sort of createdanother user because everything I use went into this "Updaters" folder. Even all my iTunes music, copies of Fonts, etc.
I'm probably just going to reinstall the system software but I'd really like to try to save some of what I've lost i.e. all my e-mail contacts, saved attachments
It's also just so weird I'd kind of like to figure out what's going on.
How much free space do you have? Sometimes apps do this when they're not given enough Virtual RAM (hard drive space). Make sure you have at least 8GB of free space.
Smoldering devices
Okay, I've been writing this for someone who I share space with. She's been having the problems and I've been trying to help her. I've suggested a few things like unplugging all the firewire devices, fixing permissions, etc. because the machine is running like molasses. She's taken some of the suggestions but not all of them.
About an hour ago we started to smell the most horrible smell and discovered that she had a "firewire hub." I didn't even know there was such a thing but it's basically a way to daisy chain a bunch of devices. Anywho, the thing was so hot it's amazing it didn't catch on fire.
I still hate Microsoft but I suspect this may have been the source of many of her problems. Thanks for your help.
Okay, I've been writing this for someone who I share space with. She's been having the problems and I've been trying to help her. I've suggested a few things like unplugging all the firewire devices, fixing permissions, etc. because the machine is running like molasses. She's taken some of the suggestions but not all of them.
About an hour ago we started to smell the most horrible smell and discovered that she had a "firewire hub." I didn't even know there was such a thing but it's basically a way to daisy chain a bunch of devices. Anywho, the thing was so hot it's amazing it didn't catch on fire.
I still hate Microsoft but I suspect this may have been the source of many of her problems. Thanks for your help.