Lost desktop

Y

Yorky Mike

Registered
My Mac went to sleep, it wouldn't restart so I pressed the power button to restart it, that worked OK and I continued working on my project. I shut down the Mac and restarted it later - my desktop icons and all the programs have gone. Hopefully not!

Is there a way to get my desktop and programs back again?
 
Have you Repaired Permissions?
If you have, and it didn't help, then use DiskWarrior to rebuild the desktop.
 
Thanks for that swift response, SatCure, superb.
Forgot to add that I was using OS X 10.3.9 at the time, and had been deleting files from Entourage to free up some disk space, and as I closed my Mac down it gave a message something like, "your Home Vault is using too much disk space do you want to free it up" I said "Yes", I've had that message before and answered "yes" but never with such disasterous results as this.
 
Thanks SatCure. Yes, I didrepair permissions but with no success, Thanks for the advice about DiskWarrior, will try and download a copy now.
 
I'm having the same trouble but our newspaper can not afford to purchase the software (although it looks great). Are there any other alternatives? We are running 9.2 on a G4. The only thing that we have done differently is that we had our network looked at, but that computer never was physically touched. Disk Repair came back negative. A Norton scan gave us an error of 23019 and then froze, asking us to recheck the disk.

Any help is appreciated... beyond that we will continue to rebuild the desktop every time it crashes.
 
Yorky Mike said:
Thanks for that swift response, SatCure, superb.
Forgot to add that I was using OS X 10.3.9 at the time, and had been deleting files from Entourage to free up some disk space, and as I closed my Mac down it gave a message something like, "your Home Vault is using too much disk space do you want to free it up" I said "Yes", I've had that message before and answered "yes" but never with such disasterous results as this.
Click to expand...

Are you using FileVault on this system? I haven't had much experience with that feature, but it sounds like you managed to somehow delete your desktop folder when you answered "yes." Also, can you be more specific by what you mean about missing "programs?" Where are they missing from?
 
NewsMD said:
I'm having the same trouble but our newspaper can not afford to purchase the software (although it looks great). Are there any other alternatives? We are running 9.2 on a G4. The only thing that we have done differently is that we had our network looked at, but that computer never was physically touched. Disk Repair came back negative. A Norton scan gave us an error of 23019 and then froze, asking us to recheck the disk.

Any help is appreciated... beyond that we will continue to rebuild the desktop every time it crashes.
Click to expand...

NewsMD, I think your problem is a little different. Can you describe the issue in more detail? Since this is an older machine, running MOS9, I wonder if maybe your desktop file has corrupted (this can cause files to disappear from the drive). You could try to rebuild it by holding down the option+apple keys (somebody correct me if I'm wrong--haven't done this in a long time) after restarting the computer. Go ahead and hold the buttons down after you hear the start-up chime. As the Finder is launched, it'll ask if you want to rebuild the desktop. Go ahead and answer yes.
 
mosx86 said:
NewsMD, I think your problem is a little different. Can you describe the issue in more detail? Since this is an older machine, running MOS9, I wonder if maybe your desktop file has corrupted (this can cause files to disappear from the drive). You could try to rebuild it by holding down the option+apple keys (somebody correct me if I'm wrong--haven't done this in a long time) after restarting the computer. Go ahead and hold the buttons down after you hear the start-up chime. As the Finder is launched, it'll ask if you want to rebuild the desktop. Go ahead and answer yes.
Click to expand...

We have done that - infact that is the only thing I can think of doing. I seem to be the more mac savvie of the staff (I have been using macs since 2001)... and I have run out of ideas.
We have:
* restarted, which brings us to the blue screen with happy macs on it (which is not making us happy... it's our own 'blue screen of death' around here)
* rebuilt the desktop but have found the extentions have turned off, and there is no way we can access the extensions (even so it's the authorized user/comp we are working on)
* started from the start up CD (OS10.x/9.x) - but then we have our correct desktop icons displayed also (which is confusing to me since if we are starting from the CD, how would it remember what is on our desktop?)
* and lastly we have pointed it to another startup disk on the computer, and still the 'blue screen of death' pops up - without our icons.
 
NewsMD said:
We have done that - infact that is the only thing I can think of doing. I seem to be the more mac savvie of the staff (I have been using macs since 2001)... and I have run out of ideas.
We have:
* restarted, which brings us to the blue screen with happy macs on it (which is not making us happy... it's our own 'blue screen of death' around here)
* rebuilt the desktop but have found the extentions have turned off, and there is no way we can access the extensions (even so it's the authorized user/comp we are working on)
* started from the start up CD (OS10.x/9.x) - but then we have our correct desktop icons displayed also (which is confusing to me since if we are starting from the CD, how would it remember what is on our desktop?)
* and lastly we have pointed it to another startup disk on the computer, and still the 'blue screen of death' pops up - without our icons.
Click to expand...

Turning off the extension occurs when you hold down the left shift button when the machine boots up. Once they're off. They're off and you'll have to reboot to get them back.

You can try restarting and holding down the space bar after the chime. Keep it depressed until the extensions manager is loaded. Then switch the extensions to Mac OS 9 Only.

Tell it to keep booting. Once it starts up again try rebuilding the desktop file.

If this doesn't work, you're probably going to have to get something like DiskWarrior.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top