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    Macbook pro problems with missing files

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by ferrarista, Jan 15, 2008.

  1. ferrarista

    ferrarista Notebook Consultant

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    Hi everyone,

    My cousin has a MBP and his having problems with missing files.

    first time it happened he lost his videos folder.

    he told me last time he went to start it. he lost all his folders and seems like it went back to all the default settings like if the OSX was re-installed clean.

    very weird. what do you guys think?

    can he get back the info he lost or is it in the hard drive somewhere?

    Is there a system restore like in windows .

    let me know .

    thanks
     
  2. cashmonee

    cashmonee Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    That is very odd. If he is on Leopard and has Time Machine running, he can look there. Not sure what could be happening to them. Has he tried searching for them with Spotlight?
     
  3. ferrarista

    ferrarista Notebook Consultant

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    hi thanks for the feedback. he actually has Tiger Osx. I will tell him to try your suggestions.
     
  4. Xander

    Xander Paranoid Android

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    Did he change the Home folder's Short Name?

    Read this <noparse>Apple</noparse> Support Document, Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory:
    Mac OS X 10.4 Help: About the Home Folder's Name

    Recover from renaming your Home folder
     
  5. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    it is most likely that he simply changed the "Home" folder like Xander mentioned above, I have actually done that myself and was quite confused for an hour or so.

    is the machine starting up with the Mac OS X Setup Assistant? I recently had a friend with an issue where the original Setup Assistant would loop as he would restart, he could fill out the information and it would just loop back to the beginning. The solution was to simply boot up in safe mode, and not log in, but simply restart from the Login Window, it seems that an update did not completely finish, so upon restart from safe mode (again just restarting from the login window) the update finished and he had no problems after that.

    check the HDD info by opening the Get Info window or looking at Disk Utility, make sure that the data is in fact not gone, it shouldn't be, the HDD usage should be the same as it has been.
     
  6. ferrarista

    ferrarista Notebook Consultant

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    cool guys. i'm gonna talk to him and show him this thread. keep going if you have other suggestions.

    will let you know of the situation.

    thanks