System Preferences & Application Preferences are Reset/Default

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System Preferences & Application Preferences are Reset/Default

Hello,

I have a Power Mac G4 Dual 867mhz 2GB ram running Tiger 10.4.11.

Recently I left my Mac on while out of the house, at the time it was running Football Manager 2006 & Itunes (as well as finder & Dashboard).

When I returned the Computer had turned itself off, which I cannot explain as I live alone. Upon turning it on, I became prompted with a default desktop. My dock was reset to the bottom filled with question marks from missing applications. My desktop background is set to the standard apple Blue wash. Upon more inspection I noticed that all of my settings on all of my Applications (Itunes, Iphoto, safari, firefox, Ical, Imail) had been reset. Applications such as Final Cut Pro, Football Manager & Real player will not open or will crash before reaching the loading page.

I started resetting all my preferences such as Bookmarks on safari, but upon reset or restart they revert back to default settings.

There has been odd behaviour too; When I look in history in the side bar on safari, than Safari becomes redundant. Not froze, just all button options are unreactive. Also In "desktop & Screen Saver" in system preferences when attempting to change the desktop background, despite the menu behaving as normal, the actual result (The Desktop picture) does not appear. When attempting to reset the PRAM on restart the mac is unresponsive, When trying to access Disc utility upon restart again the Mac is unresponsive.

There is no clear distinctive issue that I have. But I have become puzzled.

Any help would be deeply appreciated.

Thankyou for your time

Albert

Power Mac 867mhz, Mac OS X (10.5.5), 2GB Ram

Posted on Oct 8, 2008 10:08 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

Oct 8, 2008 4:36 PM in response to Albert83

Hi Albert, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

Could be many things, we should start with this...

"Try Disk Utility

1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Then Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it finishes.

The usual reason why updates fail or mess things up, or things don't load/run, is if Permissions are not fixed before & after every update, with a reboot... you may get a partial update when the installer finds it doesn't have Permissions to change one obscure little part of the OS, leaving you with a mix of OS versions.

Some people get away without Repairing Permissions for years, some for only days.

If Permissions are wrong before applying an update, you could get mixed OS versions, if Directory is the slightest messed up, who knows!

If many Permission are repaired, or any Directory errors are found, you may need to re-apply some the latest/biggest updates again, or even do an A&I if you have enough free disk space.

The combo update for PowerPC-based Macs...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html

The combo update for Intel-based Macs...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateintel.html

Repair Permissions before & after re-install, then reboot again each time.

If all the above do not resolve the problem, then it's time for an Archive & Install, which gives you a new OS, but can preserve all your files, pics, music, settings, etc., as long as you have plenty of free disk space...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

I only use Software Update to see what is needed, then get them for real via...

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

That way I can wait a week or so, check the forums for potential problems, and get Permissions & such in order before installing.

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