My Mac is dying D:

D

Donnchadh

Registered
Good day to you, I have a rather large and urgent problem.

Last night, when I attempted to open Mozilla Firefox it had magically deleted all my cookies, history, add-ons and preferences. Now this morning, all my files on my desktop have been deleted, along with all my system preferences, plus a couple of programs. All folders within the HD are displaying in an odd manner, scattered all over the place instead of locked into their normally uniform position. Additionally, the images for the "Pictures", "Movies" folders etc. are not displaying.

This bares resemblance to a virus, however ClamXav is detecting nothing, and I'm running a OSX 10.4.11, 1.42 GHz Power PC G4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM, first-generation Mac Mini. The last program I downloaded was iTunes 8 in an auto-update, besides this the last thing I downloaded was a legitimate Adobe Illustrator trial over a week ago. Haven't received any emails besides the routine Amazon/Paypal etc. lot, nor visited any websites beyond the usual (BBC, Google, Ebay etc.).

Help would be very, very much appreciated guys. Cheers.
 
Before suspecting it to be a virus, try these tips:
  • Create another user account with the same permissions and try using that account for a while. See if it starts to exhibit the same problems. If so, then you're going to have to try some other methods. If not, then it's most likely your account that's having an issue. Just recreate a new account for you (or use the new one you've created from now on) and move all of the files from your old account in /Users and move them to the new account. Don't move the directories, just the files within those directories to the respective directories in your new account in /Users. Once you've done that, delete the old account and its home directory (this should be done through System Preferences in the pane for user accounts).
  • Try using some maintenance tools like OnyX or Yasu to see if there might be issues with system files and/or permissions. Run either of these programs and then try using your old account again for a while. See if things go back to normal.
  • If things still exhibit problems, backup and reinstall OS X. Recreate your user accounts and then see if things go back to normal (they should at this point theoretically).

Also, make sure that you're updating ClamXav continuously for updated virus definitions. If you're the only one using the computer or accessing files on it (aka, not sharing files over the network), disable any type of sharing under the Sharing pane in System Preferences. Make sure your firewall is on. Be wary of web sites that you visit and know that downloading certain files from p2p networks can put you at risk. Yes, I know even stuff like bittorrent can have legitimate uses (I use them for downloading GNU/Linux distributions) but usually this is from reputable sources.

Good luck.
 
Cheers mate, I've done as advised. Everything seems to be working fine, although obviously I have to re-tweek all my preferences from scratch.

Unfortunately it appears that all my cookies/cache and my entire "Music" folder including my iTunes library has been completely deleted, along with all of my imported images from iPhoto. Luckily I still have all my old CDs and indeed camera SD card as well, and even luckier that these files were deleted and none of my personally created images or paperwork that are not backed-up. Thank God for small mercies, it'll teach me to keep everything backed-up from now on.

Thanks again mate, I'm hoping this has resolved the issue although only time will tell. I'll no-doubt be back if this Tiger freaks out and starts eating its owner's homework again ;)
 
Incidentally, the latter is exactly what I attempted to do. I take it I shouldn't repeat this action in the future?
 
Nope... although it's really easy to do, it just shouldn't be done. If you want to change your short username, follow this from Apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428

If you do rename your home folder, then the very next time you log in, a new home folder will be created -- because Mac OS X now cannot find the home folder that matches your short username. What happened is that all of your settings and preferences and what-nots are now located in a folder in /Users, named whatever you renamed the folder to.
 
So does the first folder still exists or is it deleted upon renaming? As it is not listed under Users or indeed anywhere else I can find.

I know how to change usernames, I just presumed Apple would have made such a method a shortcut of sorts. Guess not :p
 
Last edited:
You should have two folders in /Users: the old user account folder that you renamed to something different from your short username, and your new home folder that was created when you logged in after you changed the old folder name, which should match your short username.

This is the way it worked under Panther and Tiger, and I'm assuming it's the same under Leopard -- although I could be mistaken. Does the folder that exists under /Users match your short username, or is it named something different?
 
There's a folder for the re-named version before I created a new user as nixgeek advised me too, however I cannot access any of the files in that folder as it says I have "insufficient access privileges", despite the fact this is the only user on this mac and it is an admin.

Thanks for your help by the way mate, as you can probably tell, I'm not awesomely Mac savvy.

[EDIT: I'm even worse on a Windows PC, for that matter]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top