SDPC

Q: Desktop wiped out after El Cap download. Help!

After downloading El Capitan version 10.11.1, I powered down my MBP (15 inch, early 2011). When I restarted, my Desktop was clean (except for the Mac Hard Drive icon / info). No Desktop folder with prior content exists -- anywhere. Anyone else have this problem?

 

Message was edited by: SDPC

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), null

Posted on Oct 25, 2015 4:57 PM

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Q: Desktop wiped out after El Cap download. Help!

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  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 25, 2015 5:49 PM in response to SDPC
    Level 10 (207,963 points)
    Applications
    Oct 25, 2015 5:49 PM in response to SDPC

    You may have logged in as a different user, such as Guest. Open the Users & Groups pane in System Preferences. Your name should be at the top of the user list, under Current User. See also this support article.

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 25, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Thanks for your reply.

     

    I am unable to open the Users & Groups preference pane (the message I get is "Preferences Error: Could not load Users & Groups preference pane."), but all was in proper order two nights ago when I spoke with Apple Care.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 25, 2015 6:33 PM in response to SDPC
    Level 10 (207,963 points)
    Applications
    Oct 25, 2015 6:33 PM in response to SDPC

    What backups do you have?

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 26, 2015 3:04 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 3:04 AM in response to Linc Davis

    I have a Time Machine backup that's about 2 weeks old. Apple has told me that's my best bet, and if so, I will NOT be downloading El Cap onto any other Mac in the house.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Oct 26, 2015 3:35 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 3:35 AM in response to SDPC

    Before you do anything else, I suggest restarting into the Recovery system using command + R & from there run its copy of Disk Utility to perform "First Aid" on the normal startup drive (usually named Macintosh HD). This should repair any problems with the file system (& according to what Applecare recently told me also repair any messed up permissions).

     

    Once that is done, restart normally. If the desktop items are still missing, see if you can now open the Users & Groups preference pane. If you get the same error again, I suggest reinstalling El Capitan by once again restarting into the Recovery system & using its install option to do so.

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 26, 2015 3:49 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 3:49 AM in response to R C-R

    Thanks for your reply.

     

    The error no longer pops up, and my name IS listed as first in the list. Apple and I restarted in Safe Mode the other evening and there was no change. At first, my original screensaver was still there; at some point it switched to the Apple El Cap screensaver.

     

    On the off-chance that the update didn't download properly or completely, would re-installing do any further harm? (Please note that not only my Desktop was wiped out; I've lost my Downloads and Documents, also.) It took forever to download El Cap the first time -- the progress status was much longer than estimated on screen, which should have raised my suspicions.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 26, 2015 5:39 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 10 (207,963 points)
    Applications
    Oct 26, 2015 5:39 AM in response to SDPC

    This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.

    Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

    ls -@AOen De* | pbcopy

    Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

    ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

    ☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

    ☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

    Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.

    Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.

    The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.

    The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

    If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Oct 26, 2015 6:05 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 6:05 AM in response to SDPC

    SDPC wrote:

    On the off-chance that the update didn't download properly or completely, would re-installing do any further harm?

    No, reinstalling the OS should do no harm, but I strongly suggest you do "First Aid" on the startup disk from the Recovery system before doing anything else. Starting up in Safe Mode performs a check of your startup disk but it does not do as complete a job of repairing everything that might be wrong with the system as does running "First Aid" from the recovery partition, particularly on systems running El Capitan.

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 26, 2015 6:16 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 6:16 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Thank you for your reply. The command results appear below, with personal info masked:

     

     

    total 4872

    -rw-r--r--@ 1 501  20  -    6148 Oct 26 10:52 .DS_Store

      com.apple.FinderInfo     32

    -rw-r--r--  1 501  20  -       0 Oct 24 00:49 .localized

    -rw-r--r--@ 1 501  20  -  172119 Oct 26 10:20 myfilename1.pdf

      com.apple.FinderInfo     32

      com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate     53

      com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms    348

      com.apple.quarantine     22

    -rw-r--r--  1 501  20  -  222288 Oct 25 20:36 1PasswordDiagnostics-my-name-macbook-pro-2015-10-25_20-32.zip

    -rw-r--r--@ 1 501  20  -   22016 Oct 26 10:52 myfilename2.doc

      com.apple.FinderInfo     32

    -rw-r--r--@ 1 501  20  - 2058205 Oct  2 03:21 myfilename3.pdf

      com.apple.quarantine     22

      com.dropbox.attributes     83

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 26, 2015 6:30 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 10 (207,963 points)
    Applications
    Oct 26, 2015 6:30 AM in response to SDPC

    Do you see the files listed in the output on the Desktop (not including the ones with a name beginning with a dot)? Are there any files not listed that should be there?

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 26, 2015 6:32 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 6:32 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Yes, they are the ones I re-labeled "myfilename1", etc. But those are all new, since the incident. My desktop was 1/3 full of files (PDFs, photos, Word docs) before they disappeared.

     

    Thank you for your interest and reply.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 26, 2015 6:44 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 10 (207,963 points)
    Applications
    Oct 26, 2015 6:44 AM in response to SDPC

    Then all you can do is restore whatever was lost from a backup, as far as possible. Please keep in mind that you're always at risk of losing the work you did since the last backup. Time Machine backs up every hour.

  • by SDPC,

    SDPC SDPC Oct 26, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Thanks for your reply. I am traveling and will not have access to the external hard drive I use to manually back up with Time Machine, until mid-November.

    Maybe I'll try re-installing El Cap in the meantime. Not much else I can do w/o that external hard drive.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Oct 26, 2015 7:37 AM in response to SDPC
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Oct 26, 2015 7:37 AM in response to SDPC

    SDPC wrote:

    I am traveling and will not have access to the external hard drive I use to manually back up with Time Machine, until mid-November.

    You might want to try entering Time Machine anyway & seeing if there are any backups shown with dates before you lost your files. If the drive has enough space on it (& you did not disable the feature) TM will store local snapshots on your drive.

     

    Since as the drive fills up it begins deleting older local snapshots, I suggest you at least see if you have any ASAP.

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