Losing preferences on startup every time...

[jjupin]

So, I upgraded to Tiger (not a clean install, mind you) - and now, every time I restart my machine, all the settings are lost. The dock is in the wrong place (back in the standard bottom slot - I always put mine to the left), and it loses items that I had in the dock - it's only the standard one that comes up.

Safari loses all of it's settings, Keychain claims it can't find my keyChain (even after mulitple times putting in a new one)... Any ideas of where I need to go to fix this and all the rest?

Btw, iTunes totally corrupted all my songs, Eclipse lost all my environment settings, Thunderbird was totally wiped out - what gives?

Help, please!!!!

many thanx.

 

[HomunQlus]

Back up all your data on some external drive, boot from the Tiger CD and do a clean install (wipe HD). Of course, you would have to re-create and re-establish your settings, but you can be assured that most of the things will work very well.

I don't think that iTunes corrupted your songs, I think that iTunes simply won't play 'em anymore. Back up the entire iTunes Folder (it's in /Users/[YOU]/Music) as well. But delete the xml files that tell iTunes about your playlist(s) and Library. Then, when Tiger's finished installing, copy the iTunes Folder to the same location (/Users/[YOU]/Music), launch iTunes and let it sort out the rest. Unfortunately you would have to re-create your playlist(s) too.

The dock you would have to put it on the left manually, but I don't think that's much of a task...

And for the Safari thing: By wiping the drive, Safari will of course also go down with the wipe. So, when Tiger's installed, do your settings once more, and you'll see that it will stay that way.

My advise: NEVER do Upgrades (Major Version to Major Version). Only Updates (Subversion to Subversion).