All My User Preferences Just Disappeared! HELP!!

[macgeek]

I haven't done anything out of the ordinary that I can think of. I am running 10.4.2 on a 1GHz 17" Powerbook. I use my laptop at work and at home. It was working fine at work. When I opened it up at home, everything looked normal. But then I opened up iTunes and it was as if I had just run iTunes for the first time. Confused, I restarted. I now have none of my preferences set up. The sidebar in my finder is still set up and the menubar status items (such as bluetooth status and airport status) are still present. Everything else is screwy. My dock is all wrong. My desktop background/wallpaper is wrong. My dashboard is no longer set up (which really sucks!)... HELP!!

It seems like it's pulling a lot (but not all) of the info from the default user. All my data is still there... contacts, calendars, music, documents... just none of the setup around those things. User corruption of some sort?

Also of interest... my iTunes library was renamed:

iTunes 4 Music Library (Damaged)

I'm losing it here! HELP!!!! PLEASE!!

 

[LovesMacs]

Sounds like your preferences all the way around need a little help. Since it's not just your iTunes/Dock etc, go to this file: com.apple.systempreferences.plist. It's in the:
MacintoshHD>Users>Library>Preference folder. Drag that file to the Trash, empty the Trash, reboot your PBook and see if that improves the situation any. Also, if you have not done so, run Disk Utility>Repair Permissions. Disk Utility is in your Applications>Utility folder. If iTunes is still acting quirky, grab this file out of the Preferences folder also: com.apple.itunes.plist ... take that one to the Trash also, empty the Trash and try iTunes again. If this doesn't clear up iTunes, back up your iTunes library and reinstall iTunes 4.9. You can download iTunes from here:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/ Also, if trashing the systempreferences.plist file doesn't restore your Dock, Trash the "com.apple.dock.plist" file and see if that helps. If you have not done so, get either Onyx or MacJanitor,
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491 both freeware available at www.versiontracker.com. They are great utilities to run and can clear cache files and such. Keep your PB hummmmming!

Hope something that I suggested helps!
Carolyn
PBookG4/20G iPod/iBookG4/iMac233 <-Bondi and a real live Apple IIE collecting dust.

 

[bobw]

MacintoshHD>Users>Library>Preference folder. Drag that file to the Trash, empty the Trash

You definitely don't want to do that. There are files in there that will require you to reinstall some apps, and registration files. Just move it to the desktop, so you can move back files as needed, if you do this.