Ticket Options

Question Profile

Question Details

TICKET ARCHIVE -> Lost Mail accounts, iTunes library, etc.

rycharn - Jan 17, 2007 - 12:29 pm

My wife uses my old 800 MHz PowerBook G4 (running OS X.3.9). At times she lets the kids on it also. Last night my autistic 10-year-old son sneaked in and messed some things up. In addition to adding every application to the dock (and arranging them all in alphabetical order) he did something else we can't pinpoint or undo.

The first thing my wife noticed is that her dock position was at screen bottom instead of her preferred location, screen left. Then she noticed all her email disappeared from Mail. Folders were still there, but no mail in them. So she tried to iChat me (at my work) for help, afraid that he'd deleted all her email. iChat asked for a password, which it never had done before -- it's stored in the preferences. She doesn't remember her password, and so couldn't open iChat.

Then she plugged in her iPod Shuffle. iTunes opens, recognizes the iPod, but not my wife. It wants to know if she wants to sync the iPod to this (apparently empty) library because you can only sync the iPod to one library at a time. On the surface it appears that we've lost her iTunes library, but searching via Finder, we found all music intact.

My wife tried "fixing" things last night, and (as I understand) dragged the iTunes folder back to where it belongs, but iTunes still doesn't recognize the library. (Where she dragged it from I do not know.)

So now I'm at home, trying to diagnose/fix this mess... I try to open Mail, which had since been closed. It immediately pops up a window telling me "You have no email accounts configured to use Mail. Please enter the following information to send and receive email." At this point the user must either quit or fill out the fields and click ok. I can't even get in to verify her folders still exist without starting over, which I figure would probably blow out any existing preferences, meaning I might blow out the folders in an effort to verify they exist. Bad idea, so I abort.

iPhoto responds similar to iTunes -- no library, but we can find our pictures via Finder. Folders seem to be where they should, yet the app doesn't see them.

Safari acts as if we're totally new -- defaults to livepage.apple.com on startup instead of its assigned homepage.

Address Book only knows me, it should have much more in it.

Wife says she remembers closing a Finder window that my son had to have been in. He had the Applications window open -- that's how he added all the apps to the dock. My guess is he dragged something strange from one place to another in that window, but I can't figure out what. Everything appears to be in its proper place.

It seemed to me the computer acts as if we're logging in as a different user, but we have always only had one user account on the machine and there still is only the one account. Plus, the desktop shows up as it always has, even has a few misc. docs the wife put there. So it seems it can't be a login issue. Next thought was perhaps my son somehow relocated a preferences folder somewhere it doesn't belong. But I don't think he got that deep into file hierarchies, and everything I can think to look for seems to be in its proper place. Nevertheless it seems that somehow the computer isn't recognizing preferences for any programs.

So the questions: any idea what my son might have done, and more importantly how to fix it? If not, how much can I recover? (I know I can recreate the iPhoto and iTunes libraries, but then I lose all smart playlists, etc. Are the emails recoverable? Any way to tell iChat, Safari, or any other apps "look here" for the preferences you should be looking at?)

Many thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

leonard.leotech - Jan 17, 2007 - 4:37 pm

Don' worry! I am doing some research right now to find the solution to your problems. Just out of curiosity, do you back up your computer?

leonard.leotech - Jan 17, 2007 - 4:54 pm

This happened to me before. Make sure she didn't enable firevault. It provides security so tight it is impossible to get into your computer if you forget your password. This slows down your computer, and causes problems like this.

I recommend backing up your computer, so that next time, you can just go back to where you left it.

1) Change the Dock position (bottom, left, right)

The Dock appears on bottom of the screen by default, but you can choose to have it appear on the left or right. To do that, open System Preferences, choose Dock from the View menu, then click an option for "Position on screen." You may also change the Dock's position by control-clicking the Dock separator. In the contextual menu that appears, choose the desired position from the Position submenu.

2) Mail:

Your mail was probably deleted if it was on a pop account. If it was an imap account, you still have hope. You probably need her email account password to download emails. If you need to re-setup the mail account, then go to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...0/en/ml89.html for instructions.

3) iChat:

If you use AIM for iChat, there is a lot password recovery tool: https://account.login.aol.com/opr/_c...g=en&locale=us

4) iTunes:

If you still have the music on the hard drive, no problem. First, download the latest version of iTunes. It can be downloaded from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/. Then,in iTunes, click file --> import. Then choose the music you want to add to the iTunes library. Don't worry. You didn't loose your music. It just isn't listed with iTunes. This will list it with iTunes.

5) iPhoto:
Just like with iTunes, your photos still exist, but they aren't listed. Just drag the photos into iPhoto.

6) Safari:
To set the homepage for safari, click file, preferences, general, and then type in the homepage in the spot listed.

Anything else I can do for you? If you need any assitance, I am here to help you. If you have enough information, let me know so I can close the support ticket.

Good luck :-)

rycharn - Jan 17, 2007 - 11:59 pm

Thanks for your attempt at helping, but I received a better solution from another source. Someone at another forum suggested that perhaps the home folder had gotten renamed. This wasn't what happened, but it pointed me in the right direction. It seems the contents of the home folder had been dragged into the Applications folder. All I needed to do was find them and drag them back "home" again, and all was back to normal.

You had some helpful suggestions. I did not know that AIM had a password recovery help. I will store that link away for future reference.