Logged into Guest; Logged into Primary; LOST EVERYTHING!

It just happened to me too...

1) log to guest acccount (took 5 to 10 minutes to do so, usually 3 sec)
2)log out
3)log to user account and Surprise! all files are gone but all my applications are still there

How is it even possible, guest account shouldn't have permission to do anything

If any of you who have experienced this have test bed machines and can reproduce this occurrence, please post and let us (users, not Apple) know.

Several of us (users) have been trying to reproduce this to get it narrowed to a specific test case and have, as of yet, been unsuccessful. 😟

Several of us (users) have been trying to reproduce this to get it narrowed to a specific test case and have, as of yet, been unsuccessful. 😟

I can not reproduce this either but I have some theory of how something like this might happen. it seems that at least in case of several people they had unusual difficulties logging in as guest and some just gave up and rebooted and others were simply bounced to the login screen.
who knows what caused this - a system cache corruption or whatever but as I'm sure you know when you log out of the guest account the system runs a small post logout script to delete the guest home directory. if that script uses a variable to refer to the guest user (usually $1 works in such situations) instead of a direct reference to it then maybe somehow that variable is not set correctly to point guest and still points to the last account used just before the guest account. then that home directory would be deleted instead of the guest one. I admit, this is shooting in the dark and it could be something completely different but it's hard for me to imagine how else something like this could possibly happen.

This happened to me just now, and I am in complete shock.

I logged into my guest account, it got stuck for a couple of seconds (less than a minute I'd say), It skipped back to my accounts and i started logging into the guest. Something that came up though I think it is unrelated, is that I dont have access to a certain item that I needed to log in for. I then logged out and it said I had to delete my files so I did, because its just a guest account with nothing. And I get back to my administrative account and its all gone, all my files , my project for school, I have no idea waht Im going to do now. Thanks a lot Apple, I appreciate it a lot.

This is terrible, I have never even heard of this kind of thing happening on a machine running windows vista.

How in god's name can i recover anything? I havent used time machine, I dont have the harddrive to dedicate for it and its a notebook so im alwasy moving it. I never thought something so utterly rediculous could happen. There is no reason this should happen, and Apple should foot the bill of recovery software, because its a bug in thier system that did this under expected operating conditions. This is massively absurd. Is it even possible to recover your files from this?

F.Policarpo wrote:
I'm sure Toyota would be responsible if there was a big problem with the car that causes the accident.

And that is exactly what happened here, a HUGE bug in the OS they sell you. Try clicking in you guest account and see what is going to happen to you...

Did this also happen to you or are you simply "chiming in?"
We know it's a serious issue. Your comments have very little point.
If you are not using TM to back up your system, then you are asking for problems.

Two rules:
Never use the guest account. Disable it immediately
Always backup the HD, with TM or some other software. Never "assume" things will always run smoothly. "Stuff" always happens.
I am not making an excuse for this obvious bug, but I am stating the obvious.
A TM backup would have at least allowed a simple system restoration.

1. Set up guest account access
2. Logged out of my account. So far so good.
3. Logged into guest account. All normal.
4. Logged out of guest account.
5. Logged into my account. What is this I don't even...
6. ????
7. PROFIT!

Upon logging back into the main account, I found the default desktop.

"Strange" I thought to myself, "Still, I'm sure my old home directory is there, renamed as something else, ho-ho!"

It wasn't. My entire home directory is gone. Kaput. Aether.

Good thing you had time-machine set up, you say? I didn't. I am still waiting for my order to arrive with my sweet, external backup storage. After all, what's the worst that could happen in 3 days waiting for an external hdd, eh?

So, I've lost iTunes library, an assignment for Uni, notes and quotes for my house renovations, everything.

I had discontinued using TM on my external hard drive as it was becoming unreliable, and I didn't want to lose data by relying on a less-than-stellar storage device. Back in the day, I got paranoid about losing data in the Windows environment; I've been spoilt by Apple, I guess.

Oh the sweet, sweet irony.

If any log files are of interest, I can supply what I have.

those links are about a completely different issue totally unrelated to your situation.

Did you read the license agreement?

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx106.pdf

Where it happens to cover data loss under the section:

9. Limitation of Liability.

In order to use Mac OS X you agreed to those terms whether you read them or not. No one can compell you to read them, however, it is included with every copy of Mac OS X, and the installer gives you the opportunity to read them. If you choose not to, and proceed to install without taking the initiative to backup your data, you are taking the risks into your own hand. You can certainly attempt to get the data recovered, however, the limits of the guarantee are the price stated in the quoted section. How it is enforceable may vary according to your location. We can't question policy here. See the terms of use for this board. However, I can point to you where it is stated.

Whether it is a bug specific to the installer, or not taking normal precautions for updating remains to be seen.

Good luck!

Last night, my entire home directory was wiped. I can't begin to explain the anger, frustration, and violation I feel right now.

As a software developer, and computer user of over 15 years; I have never experienced catastrophic data loss like this before.

I did have TimeMachine backups of the important stuff. But, I had excluded my media files (because it didn't fit on my external drive). So, I lost about ~150G of music/videos.

Timeline:
1) My iMac is unresponsive after I try to resume watching some videos in FrontRow.
2) I try to ping (it responds), then try to SSH (no luck).
3) I assume a kernel panic, and hard boot the machine.
4) The machine comes up, but takes a long time and is generally sluggish. The cursor is beach-balling and cursor movement is sporadic.
5) I thought I clicked on my user name to login, but apparently it's loading guest account.
6) Logout of guest account, and into my account. I get default wallpaper/dock icons. I assume Finder prefs are corrupted somehow.
7) I browse my home directory. Files/folders are missing. I then notice the free space is listed at 235G, whereas before it was close to 17G. So, data loss of over ~217G.
8) Feeling of betrayal, intermixed with anger and resentment. ;-(

I've reported this as a bug. To add insult to injury, when I try to contact Apple support through apple.com/expert, it rejects my Mac's serial number and can't seem to continue further.

It could've been worse (TM does have some of my stuff). As of this morning, I have tried two data recovery utilities and neither has been successful at recovering large media files. It does seem to work better with smaller file sizes.

I looked through the system logs (narrowed the hang/problems to a 5 minute window) and could not see anything helpful there.

Ha!

I've tried to report this to Apple as a bug... this is the result:

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff79/engineroom/Public/Screenshot2009-10-07at 82851PM.png

I'd laugh if I wasn't in an apoplectic rage.