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superbloom

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 16, 2005
21
0
I'm freaking out right now. About 20 mintues ago, my computer was fine, but then all of a sudden it froze, s i force quit all the programs a saw. Next i went to the HD and saw that ALL my music and movies were gone and that my information under "kevin" was gone. Panicing, i restated my computer and when i restarted the orginal background was back as well as the original dock. All (i think) of my applications are okay, but are all my music and movie files gone???!!! please help.
 
Assuming you *didn't* change the name of your home folder...I'm not clear on what causes this, because it's never happened to me. But this is what I need you to do.

Open the hard drive from the desktop. Then open the Users folder. Inside, you should see at least two entries -- one for your current home folder, and one called "Shared Users." I think you should also see your Kevin folder, with all the things you had inside it before, there.

If this is the case, then go to System Preferences -> Accounts & Users -> Login Items -> Automatically log in as...

Either uncheck this (preferably), or set it to "Kevin." I would recommend unchecking it, and selecting the Display Login Window as List of Names option.

Then log out and log back in.
 
when i go to my user folder all i see desktop, library and pictures all seem to be ok. The music folder is virtually blank, and there is nothing else there.

so it doesnt seem like the advice works in this situation. thanks for the help guys
 
superbloom said:
when i go to my user folder all i see desktop, library and pictures all seem to be ok. The music folder is virtually blank, and there is nothing else there.

so it doesnt seem like the advice works in this situation. thanks for the help guys

no, not the User folder. the Users folder. which will be located Harddrive>Users.
 
thats what i meant, sorry.

im just very frustrated, as i dont know if its even possible to restore the computer to previous dates like a windows computer :(
 
superbloom said:
thats what i meant, sorry.

im just very frustrated, as i dont know if its even possible to restore the computer to previous dates like a windows computer :(

Mmmm, if you see a folder containing the desktop folder and a music folder and so on, you are NOT in the right place on your hard disk. You should see a folder containing a "Shared" folder and one or more home directories, labeled by the user name.

Make sure you're HERE:

Users.jpg


User folders don't really just get deleted magically....And even in Windows, there's no way to "restore" the computer back to a previous date....
 
hers what i see

Picture3.png


keep in mind that in the sidebar there should be music and movies
 
Are you sure you didn't happen to delete the side folders? the music folder is still showing up but just not in the sidebar...make sure that your settings for the side bar have music etc..checked.


Bless
 
2nyRiggz said:
Are you sure you didn't happen to delete the side folders? the music folder is still showing up but just not in the sidebar.


Bless


well once i click on it theres nothing there. whats more is that when i opened itunes, it was acting as if i had never opened it before and there are no songs or movies in itunes
 
Hmmm... this is very strange. There isn't anything interesting in your trash, is there?

Can you describe again what happened when you had the freeze? Did it lock up and force you to reset, or did you get the grey window that gave you an error message in several different languages, asking you to reset?

Also, check Disk Utility... open it up, and do two things:

- Make sure that when you click on the disk in the left, its SMART status is verified.

- run the "Verify Disk" or whatever option on the far right hand side
 
mkrishnan said:
Hmmm... this is very strange. There isn't anything interesting in your trash, is there?

Can you describe again what happened when you had the freeze? Did it lock up and force you to reset, or did you get the grey window that gave you an error message in several different languages, asking you to reset?

Also, check Disk Utility... open it up, and do two things:

- Make sure that when you click on the disk in the left, its SMART status is verified.

- run the "Verify Disk" or whatever option on the far right hand side


i checked the trash....nothing

i was trying to install the new word 2004 disc i got when it froze (i was listening to music and using safari at the time) it froze, i force quit it, then clicked the HD for whatever reason and saw the problem, i restarted a bunch of times and a bunch of ways. i tried using disk utility, but every time i run verify disk an error stops it. i have no clue whats going on as this is the first problem i have ever had.
 
Go into disk utility and check your SMART status. Also try a spotlight search, for something like one of the song names you know you have.
 
superbloom said:
i was trying to install the new word 2004 disc i got when it froze (i was listening to music and using safari at the time) it froze, i force quit it, then clicked the HD for whatever reason and saw the problem, i restarted a bunch of times and a bunch of ways. i tried using disk utility, but every time i run verify disk an error stops it. i have no clue whats going on as this is the first problem i have ever had.

If you are getting an error during the verify, then you have a file system corruption, and to fix it, you must either boot from a system install / restore DVD, or boot in single user mode, and use Disk Utility or fsck to fix the disk. You can't do this while the disk is mounted, which is why you need to boot off the system disk or in single user mode (in which the disk is mounted read-only).
 
well i decided to throw in the towel and regain as much as possible, thanks for the help guys
 
superbloom said:
i was trying to install the new word 2004 disc i got when it froze

I feel your pain, and I'm not saying this has anything to do with what happened to you but....

I remember a little over a year ago I downloaded what I thought was Word from a P2P site (because I was stupid and a total noob)

Turned out it was a script disguised as the Word installer,

I double clicked the icon like a dolt and the script ran erasing my entire home folder and resetting my mac to it's factory settings.

Not saying the Word you were trying to run was a booby trap like the one I did, but that's what happened to me. Luckily I had all my music on my iPod.

And save the flames, I learned my lesson big time.
 
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