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Serious PowerMac Problems. Please Help!

wsteineker

wsteineker

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 17, 2001
727
0
Montgomery, AL
Hi all. Here's the problem. I came home from work this afternoon and woke my computer from sleep. I opened Safari and found that my bookmarks were gone, and that the installed version was public beta 1 instad of pb2. So I went then to check my .mac mail with mail.app, and it was like I'd never used it before. I had to reenter all of my .mac information, and all of my internet prefs as well. I experience this every time I launch an app. I have no desktop images or user icons available, and I can't run disk utility because it won't let me select my HD and repair permissions. I have a horrible feeling that my home folder is gone, but I'm really not sure what the problem really is. PLEASE post any melp you possibly can. Thanks!

P.S.-I almost forgot, my iTunes library has disappeared, too. What a mess. I'm running 10.2.6, btw.
 
that is an odd problem, boot your mac os x cd and see if it sees your hard drive and repair then. if not i would go to your local apple store or reseller and buy diskwarrior 3.

iJon
 
Good idea. I'll go ahead and boot from CD and try to repair from there. It's weird, really. I mean, I can't even use dreamweaver or fireworks without it asking for the cd key. So strange!
 
like iJon said - get DiskWarrior 3.... sounds like directory issues. iJon is pretty good with this stuff =) hehe
 
Before buying disk worrier, try booting into singly user mode( apple s right at start up) and enter the /sbin/fsck -y command, it will run abunch of unix scripts to check and fixs some problems.

aethier

ps: the reason you couldnt run disk utility, is because you are unable to select the start up disk.
 
Had pretty much the exact problem last week. I repaired permissions (from the Jaguar disk) and that didn't seem to help.

Go to Users -> yourname -> Library.

Get Info on the Library folder.

I'm willing to bet thatr the permissions are all No Access. Change Owner and Group to Read & Write and that should solve the problem.
 
Finality, of a sort

Ok, so after trying to boot from disk and let disk utility take care of it, then ordering DiskWarrior and attempting to repair/rebuild my drive, and finally after calling Apple and totally confounding everyone in tech support I broke down and reinstalled Jaguar. I only lost a few weeks worth of files thanks to my handy-dandy habit of backing up semi-regularly. Still, this has been an absolute nightmare. I'm just glad I have AppleCare, as it took five different calls to Apple to get all the way to Tech Support MANAGEMENT for them to finally give up and call for a reinstall. On the one hand, that's a sh*tty way to fix the problem, but on the other hand they really did give it all they had. Thanks to everyone who helped out with this problem, guys. I really appreciate all the tips and hard work on this one. Here's hoping my G5 won't have this much trouble. ;)
 
Re: Finality, of a sort

Originally posted by wsteineker
then ordering DiskWarrior and attempting to repair/rebuild my drive
Click to expand...

i'm not sure i understand. are you saying that DW didn't help, or that it hasn't arrived yet?
 
Re: Re: Finality, of a sort

Originally posted by zimv20
i'm not sure i understand. are you saying that DW didn't help, or that it hasn't arrived yet?
Click to expand...
It didn't recover any of the data, no. But it did optimize my HD quite well. ;)
 
Re: Re: Re: Finality, of a sort

Originally posted by wsteineker
It didn't recover any of the data, no. But it did optimize my HD quite well. ;)
Click to expand...

thanks for clarifying.

sounds like the problem was corruption in your preference files. a reinstall would fix that. i believe you also could have trashed the preference files and let the OS recreate them (so you'd only have had to re-enter your prefs only once thereafter).
 
It may have been a prefs issue, but now we'll never know. The reinstall went well, and now all of the system updates are FINALLY installed. I had no idea I'd installed that much stuff between 10.2 and 10.2.6. Security updates, Java, and the iApp updates on top of the combined updater took quite a while. About half of my other apps are reinstalled and updated, and my drivers are all up to date. It'll take me another day to get the rest of the apps going and updated, and then the better part of a week to re-rip all of my music to AAC (only have mp3 backup). Still, it's been a decent experience. The installer didn't crash, which is something I can't say about any version of Windows I've ever used. So that's nice.

Hey, this reminds me of a question I had a little while back. Do you guys think that I should stay with 128k AAC or go higher than that, say to 192k or so?
 
Originally posted by wsteineker

Do you guys think that I should stay with 128k AAC or go higher than that, say to 192k or so?
Click to expand...

higher the better, if you've got the space. i use 192k AAC. i wish iTMS offered higher than 128.
 
Originally posted by zimv20
higher the better, if you've got the space. i use 192k AAC. i wish iTMS offered higher than 128.
Click to expand...
Can you hear a real difference between 192k and 128k? Not just on your desktop, but perhaps on your iPod?
 
Originally posted by wsteineker
Can you hear a real difference between 192k and 128k? Not just on your desktop, but perhaps on your iPod?
Click to expand...

i have not done a serious listening test. my computer speakers and the ipod buds aren't very critical.

when i had a pair of mackie hr824 near field monitors (borrowed from a friend), the 128kbps mp3s i played on them were clearly inferior to the 192kbps mp3s. the 192kpbs mp3s sounded pretty good, but at times i thought playing a CD (i.e. uncompressed AIFF) sounded better.

the speakers were taken back before iTunes4 was released, so the AAC test hasn't been done.

i figure if, as apple says, 128 AAC = 192 mp3, then 192 AAC is probably pretty darn good.
 
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