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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Mac 10.4 Corrupts Itune Libraries, Loses Firefox Passwords

macluvr2005 - Nov 10, 2005 - 10:42 pm

Hi,
I'm on a fully patched version of 10.4, running an iMac. Over the last several months, the following has happened several times:

1) My itunes library becomes corrupted
2) I lose all my Firefox passwords
3) Several of my Microsoft Word documents are corrupted
4) I lose my default color scheme.

I'm not certain what triggers this. It seems to begin with a corrupt MS-Word file(s).

Does anyone have any advice on how I can diagnose the source of this problem?

Thank you.

ishan - Nov 10, 2005 - 10:52 pm

By "a fully patched version of 10.4" do you mean you are running 10.4.3? If you're not, use the combo update on Apple's download page and upgrade your 10.4 to 10.4.3. For unclear reasons, even if you're already running 10.4.3, running the combo update (not what Software Update supplies, but what's on the download page at Apple) mysteriously fixes strange issues.

Firefox is still in beta (depending on the version you use) so don't be surprised is strange things happen. Firefox 1.5rc2 should be out in a day or two.

What do you mean that your Microsoft documents become "corrupted?" Do you mean that Microsoft Word doesn't recognize them as Word documents, or that it can't open them or that the actual content of the document is altered?

What do you mean by default "color scheme?" Are your running "haxies" like Shapeshifter, or are you talking about Colorsync profiles.

I need a bit more info to help sort this out. Please let me know when you have time.

Also, this is a good opportunity to emphasize the importance of making backups of irreplaceable files. You should establish a backup schedule and stick to it. There's a wide range of software available that will perform unattended backups on regular basis.

HTH and please let me know more about your issues...

macluvr2005 - Nov 10, 2005 - 11:01 pm

Thanks for your reply.
Let me clarify:

1) By fully patched, I mean that I have no software updates pending (you know how the menu bar has an item for Software Updates...). When I goto About My Mac.. I see 10.4.3.
2) I'm running ff 1.04, and I don't believe this is related to a stability problem with ff per se - i've never had any other problems like this. This happened last night at about the same time as everything else. My suspicion is that a large number of files, perhaps stored in a similar place on disk, were corrupted.
3) For color scheme, I mean go to System Preferences, select Appearance, and configure the appearance of the screens. For example, while I had selected "Graphite" for the Appearance, when my system corrupted, Appearance was reset to Blue.
4) Speaking of backups, another problem is that I can't burn any backups to my cd/dvd drive. The burner crashes. This, too, seems to be related.

As an aside, I'm a very experienced computer user (although clearly I don't know everything about mac) so feel free to give me very precise technical advice if you like. My hunch is that I may have some disk corruption going on, but I don't know how to validate this.

I'll go get the new mac patch from the download site now.

Thanks again.
Bob

ishan - Nov 11, 2005 - 5:38 am

I think your hunch is correct. Ideally, the most efficient way to fix your problem is to copy all your irreplaceable files to another drive and do an erase/install of Mac OS X, followed by using the combo updater to get to 10.4.3. Alternatively, if the combod updater you are downloading does not fix the problems, I would a) repair permissions with Disk Utility b) startup with your original install CDS, run Disk Utility from the CD and repair your disk c) buy DiskWarrior from Alsoft (if you haven't already) and rebuild your disk directory using DW's boot disk and d) use Yasu (Yet another system utility) and Preferential Treatment (both freeware available at versiontracker.com and macupdate.com) to erase user system and user caches (Yasu does this) and check your user and system prefs (Preferential Treatment does this). There is another program which is fantastic called Applejack which can only be used in "Safe" mode (startup Macintosh with command-S held down) which will do the permissions repair/cache deletion/preference checks/swap file deletion and a number of other things while booted in safe mode. It'a freeware and also available from the usual download sites. Applejack runs under your control, so you can do part or all of this; the choice is yours. Hope some of this helps and let us know what happens.