Help! My cat laid on my keyboard and my mac is soooo messed up!

Welcome To  Discussions Heather!

I suspect that either your cat, or yourself, changed the Short Name of your User Account in HD > Users: HERE.

If so, review the articles linked to below.

Return to Default Desktop, Apparent "Loss" of Home Directory

My home folder and desktop are different than before

Recover from renaming your Home folder, authored by Dr Smoke




ali b

HI Heather and welcome to Apple Discussions....

Running Disk Utility was a very smart thing to do! Apparently it repaired permissions and that's a big step in the right direction.

As for your Dock, every time you launch an application, just click the icon in the Dock, then click, "Keep in Dock".

As for your Desktop... go to System Preferences/Desktop&Screen Saver/Desktop and select which Desktop background you like.

You always add Address Book back to your Safari browser.

Tiger does not support a system restore like Windows.

If you need more help, post back. I have 2 cats... been there, done that so I really understand.

Carolyn 🙂

I can't see how your Address Book can completely disappear... so try a Spotlight search. Click the round icon top right in your Menu with the magnifying glass icon. Type in: Address Book
Hopefully you'll see Address Book in there. At the top of list click where it says: Show All
If you see Address Book... click the little circle on the right with the arrow in it. It will give you the path to where it is.

My fingers are crossed.

Carolyn 🙂

I think what you need to do is to renamed your prior library folder lmkkkkklop to library.

I renamed the library folder in my t3 account. The system will let you rename the library folder but will immediately create a new library folder. Hence your cat renamed the library folder . I think you're missing information is in the library folder and you could look around for it . It is not simple to rename the prior library folder back to library.

Here is what you need to do, I assume you are working from an administrator account.
0) I suggest backing up your system or at least any important data. Be sure to backup lmkkkkklop.
1) create a new administrator account.
From an administrator account , click on the Blue Apple. click on system preferences. Click on account. Click on the lock symbol. Click on the +. Fill in the account information and check that is administrator account.
2) log off from your prior administrator counterparts.
3) log on to the new administrator account. Now you need to get into the terminal.
what you need to do is to rename lmkkkkklop

here is an example:


Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
# be very careful from Terminal. You can trash your entire system when you do a sudo bash. When done, enter exit
# typed in your login password from the current account.
# Your password will not appear when done press enter.
mac $ sudo bash
Password:
root # cd /Users
/Users
root # ls
...
t3/
root # # here he is need to substitute to your prior user name for t3
root # # it is the short user name
root # cd t3
/Users/t3
root # # You may want to use ls -l
root # ls
.CFUserTextEncoding Library copy/ Pictures/
.DS_Store Library-old/ Public/
Desktop/ Library-old2/ Sites/
Documents/ Movies/
Library/ Music/
root # # the mv command is the move command and in this format it does the rename.
root # mv -i Library Library-older
root # mv -i Library-old Library
root # # You may want to use ls -l
root # ls
.CFUserTextEncoding Library copy/ Pictures/
.DS_Store Library-old2/ Public/
Desktop/ Library-older/ Sites/
Documents/ Movies/
Library/ Music/
root # man mv
root # # type the letter q to quit
root # man ls
root # # type the letter q to quit
root # # type the letter q to quit
root # # the man command for manual list cryptic information about the command
root # exit

You're welcome Heather!

"Now I'm just trying to figure out if I can delete the library folder the cat created."

Compare it contents to the real" Library folder, to ascertain if everything is there, then pull it out to the Desktop, and if everything is hunky-dory for a few days, you can trash it.

ali b

Hi Heather,

The guys and gals at the Genius Bars rock! I'm so glad you were able to find a solution and thanks for reporting back, much appreciated.

Here's a tip: My cats walk across my keyboard when I'm no looking and accidentally turn on the Num lock (F6). There's a green light that will go on just to the left of the F6 key if it's on. I'm not sure if it's the exactly the same on a MBPro but it probably similar to that of an iBook or PBook.

Carolyn 🙂

Brainstorming does wonders. Remember... a nice warm hard drive makes for a great catnap 😉
You did awesome!

Carolyn 🙂

You're Again Welcome Heather!

That's great news!

Repost if you have additional questions or problems.

ali b