Dock Settings lost

MidnightJava

Registered
My Docks settings were lost for an unknown reason. Suddenly there was nothing in the Dock but the Finder and a couple items that launched on startup, such as the printer utility and TextWrangler. It was easy enough to put stuff back in the Dock, but I'd like to know what happened. This is most likely the latest manifestation of a problem I'm having, wherein all my user settings were wiped out twice in the past couple weeks. See this thread for details on that problem, which remains unresolved. For this occurrence, only the Dock settings seem to have been affected.

Is there a pList file or some other file that I can check to see the exact date and time that the Dock settings were reset? I checked the info.plist file in the app bundle for System Preferences, but its create and modified dates were in 2004. If I can get the exact time this reset occured, I hope to be able to correlate it with other events and find out why this is happening.
 
Launch /Applications/Utilities/Console and look at the logs for that date. Also look at the Crash Reporter log. If I had to guess is you now have a bad sector on you hard disk. That is only a guess.
 
Thanks for your response. I had already checked the logs, and nothing jumped out at me as explaining why settings got wiped out. One possible exception: As mentioned in the other thread, I get a syslogd:restart in the log at 3:15 AM, from the daily maintenance task. I see a command in the 500.daily script that kills syslogd. I understand that launchd restarts it automatically, which explains the syslogd:restart. Some folks on the CCC site thought it was unusual and possibly a problem that I was getting syslogd:restart in the log, since they had the same command in their script file, but didn't get the log entry. I'm inclined to think syslogd:restart is expected bavior, but I mention it here in case someone thinks differently.

What I was hoping to do was find out what time the settings got reset, so I could see if there were any log entries at that time that might indicate the cause. So I'm wondering if there's a way I can find out when the Dock settings were reset, for example by looking at the create or modify time of a pList file. But I looked around and didn't see any file that would indicate this.

Regarding having a bad sector, someone else suggested that when I had the user settings reset. However... I erased the entire drive and restored the system from backup twice. The firsat time I did that, I had the user settings reset again. After the second restore, the Dock settings were reset. Is this behavior consistent with a bad sector? Isn't it too much a coincidence that the user settings and Dock settings would happen to be mapped to the bad physical sector after each of the two system restore operations? Or is there some reason that would be the case?

Finally, assuming it is a bad sector, can I do anything about it, short of replacing the drive? I tried the repair function in Disk Utilitiy, and it said the drive was fine. Not sure if this looks for things like bad sectors, however. Is there a way to mark the sector as bad so it doesn't get used in the future?
 
Well be prepared to goto the next level. Here we go:

1. Boot into Single-User Mode (If you have a PPC Mac)

2. Once you get a prompt in Single-User Mode type this exactly(note the space between k & -): fsck -yf

3. Let it run and see if comes up with a message everything is o.k. If it had to modify things, run the test again.

4. To get out just type this at the prompt: reboot

Let us know if this helps at all.
 
I got into single-user mode and discovered to my chagrin that I'm up the creek without a paddle because all I have is a wireless keyboard. My PC unfortunately has a PS-2 keyboard connector, and I've torn the house apart looking for the PS-2/USB adapter I know I have. And of course I discovrted all this right about closing time for CompUSA. I have a USB mouse, but I don't think that helps me in single-user mode.

Is it okay to power the computer off at this point, and will it come back up in regular mode without me typing reboot? I'll get an adapter for the keyboard tomorrow, but my wife would like to use the computer in the meantime if that's possible.
 
No, the Mac didn't come with any keyboard. It's a Mac Mini. We bought it from the Apple Store, and we selected the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse as accessories. I didn't worry about not having a USB keyboard because I have one with my PC. Only trouble now is that I can't find the PS/2-USB adapter that I thought I had.

I just got home with a USB keyboard, designed for a PC, but the salesman assured me it would work with a Mac if I didn't want to use the programmable keys function, which I don't. It was half the price of the Mac keyboard (and much cheaper than a PS/2-USB adpater), and since it's only a backup, I thought it was the best deal.

However, when I plug it in (to the computer already booted in single-user mode) I just get a bunch of errors, such as

Error mapping module file com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite
Can't map com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite in preparation for loading
Can't determine dependencies for com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite
Couldn't alloc class "AppleUSBComposite"
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite isn't a valid mach-0

And then it's unresponsive after that.

I don't know if this is an incompatibility or an artifact of plugging in teh keyboard after the computer was loaded in single-user mode.

Is it safe to just trun the Mac off at this point??? I'd like to try that and perhaps save the trouble of taking another trip to CompUSA. Can someone please let me know ASAP, as it's getting close to closing time and I'll need to go just in case if I don't get an answer.
 
Try to turn off the mini. Then using the USB keyboard hold down the "x" key (while the machine is booting up) to see if will start in OS X.
 
Already traded up to the Apple keyboard when I saw your message. When I put the Apple keyboard in I got no response, and the caps light was stuck on. Seems Mac doesn't support inserting a keyboard after booting, at least not in single-user mode.

Ran fsck -yf and it completed with no Problems. In your mind, does that shoot down the theory of a bad disk sector? Any other ideas what the problem is, or what I should look for next time or things I can do now to trap the problem next time it occurs?
 
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