The Case of the Missing Preferences

O

octopede

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Using: 10.3.9 on Powerbook G4

Problem: After a normal reboot, I log in to find that all sorts of things have mysteriously changed or disappeared. Most icons vanished from the dock, leaving only question marks in their places. All of my apps prompt for start-up info (registration, set prefs, stuff I did ages ago upon install). In short, it's as if half my plists got corrupted (though usual culprits like desktop image didn't change).

No restarts/logouts remedy the problem. So far I've disabled File Vault, repaired permissions, booted from Disk Warrior CD, etc, etc. Still, everything's wacked and none of my programs have any recollection of prefs, bookmarks, presets, registration, etc. My next step is a complete OS re-install, unless I hear otherwise.

Hints: the only new things I've done recently is install Firefox 1.5 (which is behaving very erratically, by the way) and, 2 days before this problem, a certain girlfriend closed the lid during a File Vault (I know, I know) logout process, causing a freeze and necessitating a manual reboot.

Any suggestions?
 
Is FileVault absolutely necessary? I would turn it off unless you, a) are an employee of the government, b) store sensitive bomb-making or international terrorist documents in your home folder, or c) store sensitive company documents that could lead to the downfall of your business if they fell into the wrong hands in your user folder.

Other than that, FileVault is extremely picky about how it starts up and shuts down. It sounds like your user account may have become corrupted, no doubt due to the fact that a critical process was interrupted (girlfriend closing the lid).

I would not recommend using FileVault unless you've got top-secret stuff in your home folder. No one wants to steal your music or family photos, and a good login password is just as secure as using FileVault in this case. FileVault is absolutely useless if someone has your login password... if your laptop gets stolen, what is it that FileVault is trying to protect?
 
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