mac has booted to default settings!

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Level 1

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mac has booted to default settings!

I installed a ssd drive as a system drive by swaping out the optical drive. It has been working great the last few months until now.

I booted up my machine tonight. All seemed well, my icon image showed and accepted my password as usual but the wallpaper is a default mavericks one and all my apps that usually sit in the dock have disapeared and have been replaced with the default apps as if I had done a clean install.

Disk utility shows my ssd system drive and verifies and repairs with no errors. I cannot access the system drive where (I hope) all my applications and settings are.

I attempted to change the path to my settings and files etc via 'system preferences', 'user accounts', 'advanced', 'change path' and this doesnt show the ssd system drive either?!

Also, the startup disk shows as the ssd system drive bit will not load all my settings.

If anyone has any ideas to get all my settings back I would appreciate it massively!

Thanks!

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 17, 2013 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,978 points

Dec 17, 2013 3:36 PM in response to jealouskid

Could the computer have started in a different user account, such as Guest or other? If that were to happen, none of your user account features or files, etc would be evident. And if you changed settings elsewhere that were not required to assign the SSD as a startup disk, that may have caused this situation.... or not.

If you can start the computer from a recovery disc partition, what would that have saved? The older system or a newer one on the SSD? Something may be acting as a default, but the user accounts or improper changed user settings or names can give bad results, too.

Anyway, sounds like a ton of fun... but not chocolate.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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