Missing preferences

S

sidders

Registered
Macbook- Mac OS X 10.6

Forgive me if this question as been asked\answered a thousand time before I am new to all things Mac. I have experience in windoze and Linux.

When logging onto the mac the other day, a questions mark appeared, upon logon all of my system preferences had disapeared, including Itunes, mail etc along with a number of icons. The machine did do several updates and the icons re appeared, but the Itunes and mail are still missing.

I am assuming that the preferences are in some sort of profile somewhere.

I have the system logs from before, during and after the event.

Thanks
 
After further poking around n the forum, it seems that running the disk utility is popular, however i cant seem to square how that would help. I might try it anyway if there are not going to be any adverse effects.

Are the system preferences store in a .profile file?.
 
Now when you say your preferences disappeared, what do you mean? Do you mean question marks appeared in the Dock, the strip of icons along the bottom (or side) of the screen?

Did you look in /Applications for iTunes and Mail? You can drag the icons out of /Applications to get them back on the Dock. As to where the sys prefs are stored, it depends. Application prefs are stored in ~/Library/Preferences

Preferences for the Dock are in there too, I'm sure. Probably com.apple.dock.plist (but I'm not in front of my Mac right now to check).
 
Last edited:
The question mark appeared once at logon.

The Itunes application exists, however the tunes tyhat were in the itunes have disappeared along with emails and mail settings. Its as if it is a new account.

Maybe i am using system preferences in the wrong context.
 
sidders said:
Maybe i am using system preferences in the wrong context.
Click to expand...
I think you might be also.
"System Preferences" is an application located in your "Application" folder.
So it will be hard to get good information on your problem, until we know exactly what your problem is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top