Half the System files have dispeared

[joseph2166]

I started up my iMac just now and was suprised to find that it took me to the login window instead of just automaticaly signing me in. Intriguied at my user picture (a blue question mark) I logged on and found that the background was plain blue (I normaly have the apple background). I went to change this and discovered that all of the background pictures had disppeared (as had the user photos). It could access my iPhoto library to chose pictures but the default ones were gone.

Confused I decided to go on the net to see if anybody else had had this problem before - but my network settings had been reset.

Half of my settings have dispeared appaarently (along with those backgrounds!) - I still have most things -safari bookmarks and keychains, all my files etc. I tried to restore a .Mac Backup I made (using backup 3.0 but backing up to an external drive) but backup is under the impresion that none of my backup plans have files associated with them. If I try and add files to a plan none of the 'quick picks' (preset things such as safari shortcuts etc.) can be seen!

Anyone any ideas what has gone wrong? And OSX has no internal backup of system files does it like XP (i hate to mention that name here!) has?

Thanks in advance - very annoying..

oh and one other thing that reset - iWork was telling me my trial was over.

 

[joseph2166]

I realy want to know what's going on - all my default widgets have gone - the only ones left are ones i've downloaded.

 

[joseph2166]

No worries! For some reason OSX decided to move most of my library files to a backup library folder... lol

 

[cebritt]

Repair Permissions

By all means, I would run Disk Utility and repair your permissions. That's a good thing to do periodically anyway and especially when something odd happens.

I leave my iMac running all of the time but I shut it down this past week to move it to a new desk. When I turned it back on, it emitted that loud tone like when it updates the firmware and then took me to a plain prompt that said "Type Boot Mac" to continue. I nearly crapped my pants! Fortunately it booted fine and everything was back to normal...