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Ical, Adress Book and email information lost!

Hi everybody

I have a very bad problem with my macbook. I could not first read my apple mail. Than I figured out that my personal information from my computer is gone. I do not have my ical data, also my adressbook information and the settings of my desktop turned to default. It looks so like i first start with my macbook. One good thing is that my files are there, but like I said, the whole other information is gone. I have a time machine, but I do not see any possibility to get back my email information, adressbook info and ical info.
I would appreciate every help
Thank you very much

MacBook Aluminum, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Nov 13, 2009 4:30 PM

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11 replies

Nov 13, 2009 5:02 PM in response to doichin_s

since you have time machine backups you can easily restore all that data from TM. but before we get to that please clarify what exactly happened. do you have ANY of your personal info left in your home directory? any documents in the Documents folder, movies in the Movies folder, music in the Music folder? is any of this stuff still there?
do you have Guest account enabled on your computer and have you used it recently?

Nov 13, 2009 5:16 PM in response to V.K.

Hi,
thank you for trying to help me. Let me answer your questions: So all my personal information is still there movies, pictures, documents and others. I don't have an guest account.
There was some message from my keychain, but unfortunately I don't remember it. Something else, my skype behave strange. I had some credit in it, but now it shows me that I don't have any. When I open it in the web, I can see this credit.
I installed sophos antivirus programm and it detect just some troj called Troj/BytVrfy-C. I don't think that this is the reason, but I actually don't know.
The changes started also with change of my desktop picture, and reset all the system preferences.
My all programs are also there.
As I did my back up, I excluded the applications from it, will this be an problem?
So far that is the information I can give.

Thank you very much one more time

Nov 13, 2009 5:28 PM in response to doichin_s

doichin_s wrote:
Hi,
thank you for trying to help me. Let me answer your questions: So all my personal information is still there movies, pictures, documents and others. I don't have an guest account.
There was some message from my keychain, but unfortunately I don't remember it. Something else, my skype behave strange. I had some credit in it, but now it shows me that I don't have any. When I open it in the web, I can see this credit.
I installed sophos antivirus programm and it detect just some troj called Troj/BytVrfy-C.

never heard about Troj/BytVrfy-C but info on the sophos page suggests that this is a windows trojan. it can only affect windows. are you running windows?
I don't think that this is the reason, but I actually don't know.
The changes started also with change of my desktop picture, and reset all the system preferences.
My all programs are also there.
As I did my back up, I excluded the applications from it, will this be an problem?

that prevents you from doing a full system restore which would have been the safest thing here. this is why I recommend not excluding any system files or applications from backups.

so in your situation I would suggest the following. go to system preferences->accounts and make a new admin user. log out of your current user and log into the new admin user. open /Users folder in finder. inside are the home directories for all users on your computer. enter TM interface and scroll back in time to a point before all the problems started. select the home directory of your main user and hit "restore". you'll need to enter your admin password. in the popup asking you if you want to replace the original or keep both choose "replace". this will restore the entire home directory of your main user. log out of the temp admin user and log into the main user. all your stuff should be back. when you start Mail it will say that it needs to import your mail. say "yes".
So far that is the information I can give.

Thank you very much one more time

Nov 13, 2009 6:24 PM in response to V.K.

+so in your situation I would suggest the following. go to system preferences->accounts and make a new admin user. log out of your current user and log into the new admin user. open /Users folder in finder. inside are the home directories for all users on your computer. enter TM interface and scroll back in time to a point before all the problems started. select the home directory of your main user and hit "restore". you'll need to enter your admin password. in the popup asking you if you want to replace the original or keep both choose "replace". this will restore the entire home directory of your main user. log out of the temp admin user and log into the main user. all your stuff should be back. when you start Mail it will say that it needs to import your mail. say "yes".+
So I do everything like you said, but when I try to restore the information it tells me that I don't have enough space. I have actually 74G and if I look at the info about my home directory it says that there are 52G. I am a bit confused. I will take my computer home and free some space. Lets see if this will work than.
Thank you

Nov 13, 2009 6:30 PM in response to doichin_s

this is strange. in this case instead of restoring the whole home folder restore just the Library folder in it. that might be enough. then try logging in as the old user.

also, run "verify disk" in disk utility. if it reports any errors boot from the snow leopard DVD and repair disk using disk utility there.

Message was edited by: V.K.

Nov 13, 2009 8:22 PM in response to V.K.

Hi, I solved the problem, as I restored the library.Everything is again like before, but it was really scary. Maybe because I had a lot of applications open and that caused the lost of this information. I could not restore the info from the second account I created. There was some sign on the icon for library, which didn't allow me to restore the information, but as I did it from my real account it worked again.
1000 of thanks for you!

Nov 13, 2009 9:04 PM in response to doichin_s

doichin_s wrote:
Oh, there is some problem. I will try to fix it. Should I just reinstall the Snow Leopard?

that need not be necessary. boot from the snow leopard install DVD, start disk utility from the utilities menu and run "repair disk" on the main drive. see if it can fix the errors.

to boot from the DVD, insert it, reboot and hold "c" at the chime.

Ical, Adress Book and email information lost!

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