Everything keeps resetting itself...

[Nectar]

on my PB G4. Safari is reset itself so everything in my preferences are set back to the defaul and there are links [apple/news] added to my bookmarks bar.

Mail has reset itself as well, and I've lost my accounts and emails.

Also, whenever I start up iTunes, the library is damaged.



Anyone know what the problem could be?

 

[mad jew]

Have you tried to rename your Home folder recently? Alternatively, do you have at least 8GB of free space available on the hard disk?

 

[Nectar]

Nope, I didn't try renaming it.

How can I tell how much free space I have?

 

[mad jew]

Click on the smiley face in the Dock and it should come up with a new Finder window. At the bottom of this, it should say XXX space available.

 

[Nectar]

53.34 available.

 

[mad jew]

That's plenty of space, assuming they're gigabytes (GB) and not megabytes (MB).

Can you think of any recent changes you've made to your system? Have you deleted any folders, used any maintenance apps, or renamed anything?

 

[Nectar]

Oops, yes it's GB.

I don't remember doing any of that. It seemed that when I installed firefox a month ago, things kinda got messed up on safari, but maybe this is related to something completely different. It's just been the last couple days that itunes & mail have been surprising me in this way.

 

[Nectar]

I just rebooted and now all my bookmarks are gone, my mail is gone, and the airport icon on the top is missing, along with my isync icon. Firefox won't start up either.

Omgosh.. what's happening.

 

[mad jew]

Well, there's quite a few things this could be. Firstly, I'd make a new user account, make some quick changes to it, and see if it has the same short term memory loss problems.

Then, I'd make sure the file system is in order by running fsck.

After that, I'd check that you don't have some bad RAM by taking out a chip at a time.

 

[Nectar]

I remember something about mirroragent not letting me log off.

Also when it's in sleep mode, it sometimes doesn't wake up. It did this to me the other day and I had to shut it down manually. Maybe it messed things up by doing that..

The ram I have is what came with it when I bought it months and months ago. I'll do what you suggest and see if it makes a difference.

psst.. ty for your quick advice.

 

[mad jew]

I remember something about mirroragent not letting me log off.

What exactly happened? Did you get an error message whilst syncing with .Mac or something like that?

Also when it's in sleep mode, it sometimes doesn't wake up. It did this to me the other day and I had to shut it down manually. Maybe it messed things up by doing that..

That reboot shouldn't have messed things up but is interesting all the same. I really hope it's not a logic board problem. At the moment, I'm more inclined to think that it's probably RAM-based but you haven't mentioned any kernel panics, which are generally synonymous with bad RAM (eventually).

The ram I have is what came with it when I bought it months and months ago. I'll do what you suggest and see if it makes a difference.

Just a quick note, RAM can act normally and then be triggered by a change in the system (an OSX update is a pretty common example) before starting to fail. It sucks, but it's just what can happen. I'm not saying anything definite at this stage but I'd be very interested to hear what happens in the new user account.

In case you weren't sure, new user accounts can be made through System Preferences, under the Accounts tab.

psst.. ty for your quick advice.

No worries. Hopefully we'll get some sort of solution/explanation soon.

 

[exeterbohemian]

Have you tried to rename your Home folder recently? Alternatively, do you have at least 8GB of free space available on the hard disk?

i experienced this same exact problem awhile back.. and my home folder was right where it was supposed to be. hadn't moved it or renamed it or anything. i had (as i soon discovered), however, inadvertently moved one of my 'library' folders. which is where all of the settings for safari, mail, isync, etc. are stored. i believe (someone correct me on this if i'm mistaken) that you should have three different library folders. maybe try making sure they're all in the right place... (i'd tell you where they should be, but i'm not on my powerbook right now).

 

[mad jew]

Yeah, there are (at least) three library folders. There is one for the Home folder (the user account), one for the boot up drive, and one for the OSX 'System' folder. All three of these shouldn't be moved, deleted or renamed.

 

[Nectar]

I couldn't figure out what was happening so I ended up erasing everything to a clean start. Hopefully it won't do this again, if it does, I'll resurrect this thread. Thanks guys.