preferences gone! please help

doublejoint

doublejoint

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So I just installed that broadbandoptimizer thing (which is working great) but when I restarted my computer, all of my preferences were gone (no dock is reset to original, internet explorer's prefs are gone, mail app has NONE of my accounts or emails anywhere. Anyone no where they all went? What folder in the library holds all this information anyway?
:confused:

thanks for any help. I'm still clueless as to how prefs work with OSX
 
also I just noticed that all of my apps are now in the main application folder, not the application folder from my home like they used to be. I tried moving the mail app to my home applications folder to see if it would use the prefs from my home library, but it didn't work.
 
well this stuf still confuses me in osx as well but you should be able to locate your preferences by searching for 'plist'. this is osx suffix for prefs. now where you need to move them back to i don't know
 
hum....I searched for plist and it came up with 543 documents, none of which look like any simple solutions i.e. mail app prefs...etc. They're all pretty crypted and mysterious.
 
ok, i found my "com.apple.mail.plist" under users/me/library/preferences

I am using broadbandoptimizer so this must be where they go. look there first to see if they are still there.
 
yes I do have those, but I they all say that they were modified today! That could be bad. I wonder where the old ones are? The main bummer is that I had mail in my mail app that I wanted to save and now I have no idea how to get it back.
 
I just did a search for com.apple.mail.plist and it only came up with one file, so maybe it just threw the old one away and replaced it. But why would it do this is what I'm wondering. I guess I should back these babies up or something for the future.
 
Your mail should still be there. I'm on my PeeCee @work so I may be wrong on the location, but here it goes.

Try: ~/library/mail/ (~ = your home folder)

If you do not see your pop mail or imap mail or any folders in here then it sounds like your profile has been corrupted.

If this is the case you may want to check this location next to see if you have a new home folder. Your old one may have a different name or something now.

User folders: /users/

If you are the only user account on your computer then you should only see one user in your user folder. If you find that you do have two user folders and you want to save some preferences, try copying information from on profile to the same location in your current profile. I wouldn't recommend dropping a whole folder over, but try one program preference at a time.

Preference folder: ~/library/preferences/

There may be other locations set by different programs for their preferences so not all prefs may reside in this folder.

Hope this helps in any way.:D
 
thanks for all your help. I just spent the last couple hours getting everything back the old fashioned way though. I even got my emails back when I set up the account again it retreived all the old mail that was on the server. Anyway, I just backed up all of my prefs in my own library. I think I could get it back the way it is now if I were to lose it again.

anyway thanks again for responding
 
there shouldn't be a unix command neccesary to install BBO but i suppose some of you linux folks would naturally do it that way (move a folder that is). at any rate i use BBO and did not have this problem afterwards. I did have this problem once and also fixed it the old fashioned way and things havve been fine since. I never reaally pinpointed what caused it or else i just don't remember. I do remember BBO caused no problems

glad you're back in business:)
 
yeah I should try that history thing. when I installed it however, I just dropped the bbo folder into the startup items folder (without using the terminal). but anyway, it's nice to know I've got it back, and backed up.
 
Apple's installer from OS X 10.0 prior to I think .4 had some problems with permissions. I had a program that virtually wiped out everything because of this bug. The developer thought I was crazy until I showed him how to reproduce the problem and subsequently wipe out his system too.
This may have been what happened to you.
 
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