PERMISSION MESSED UP HELP ! LOCKED OUT OF DISKS

doesn't re-formatting erase all the information on the disk, or am I remembering that incorrectly ?

Also I've already repaired disks and permissions & spent three days at it becaue things don't happen as they are supposed to.

I need the correct information to reset all permissions everywhere back to default

I'm going loopy with this & have been trying to find a solution since friday 13th !!!! when it alll went wrong !!!!!

It isn't clear which disk you suggest repairing permissions on & what disk you want me to erase. If the external hard disk is erased I will lose my backup & if the internal computer hard disk is erased I will lose all information in the computer which would also include a hard disk partition with stuff on it.

And, if I boot up from an OS install CD & then install it fully, the chances are every will "work' but I won't have a single application I have previously purchased, any previous documents from the past twenty years or a single setting made anywhere in the OS.

So what would the point of doing that be ? It wouldn't be doing anything except show the computer hardware with new operating system worked. I think we already know that.

The problem that needs addressing is to find out: -

a) what are the correct permissions & where they should be

b) how to find all the places where permission are wrong and find out how to correct them

c) is there a way of issuing one instruction to correct permissions everywhere on the entire computer

My understanding is that there is a way of correcting permissions back to "default' using one instruction which will then re-set all permissions everywhere on the computer. But I don't know what this instruction or how and where to find it & do it.

Hi Eric & others,

I really appreciate your help, but I have tried this several times & what happens is when I reboot from the snow leopard install disk and hold down the 'c' key, go to utilities & reset password I can reset ACL's for two accounts, but with my own, main account which is the problem one , the reset just says it's running & never completes to reach the stage of 'done'. On at least two occasions I have left it running for at least three hours & then just given up & turned the computer off.

I have looked at a number of suggestions here on the support forum & I notice there seem to be a number of different ways to deal with the problem all involving different bits of code, but with similarities. So it is all a bit confusing as I would have thought that different bits of code do different things.

When I was trying one very likely looking solution to access the external discs I was locked out of, something bizarre happened which was that the code I entered in terminal at first appeared to do nothing and appeared to fail to unlock the external disc, but a moment or two later it WAS unlocked & I have access. That was the same disc the time machine backup was on and that I had used to restore from.

But the truly wacky part of this is that when I tried the same code ( a couple of times) to unlock the other two partitions of that same external disc, (which are shown as separate external disc icons on the desktop), it didn't work & I remain locked out of those two partitions which say I don't have permission to access them.

My guess is that this is because, although they are called separate discs, they are really partitions of the one external disc and so need different code instructions or something.

How can I get access to these two disc icons which are really partitions of the one actual external disc .

Thanks WZZZ,

I'll try this & report back.

I've tried everything I can think of and am still locked out of a partition on my computer hard disk where I had stored a previous, older OS & I am also, separately, locked out of a partition on an external hard disk which I think also has an old OS, possibly Tiger, on.

But worse than that is that in the past few days my whole main user account on the computer which I had restored by booting up from the Snow Leopard OS disk holding down the 'C' key is becoming increasingly corrupted. It is painfully slow & unusable because of that, & the time machine backups seem to have gone nuts., One produced a 500 plus GB backup from a computer hard disk which is only 250 GB big. Others time machine backups remain incomplete, others backup really,really slowly and never seem to complete. It's chaos.

Then today safari just refused to load in that main user account although it continued to load and allow it to be used in another account.

The only solution seems to me to be to completely erase everything, everywhere and re-install the Snow Leopard OS again after emptying the computer hard disc completely.

And then leaving all my information on the external hard discs and not restore as I did before because that will just re-install the same problems.

I find this ridiculous and now I have learnt a bit more about it and the fact that many people have had this problem when restoring from a time machine backup it seems to me that apple software is just total rubbish and not fit for purpose.

Can anyone tell me what on earth is the solution to restoring default permissions on ALL files. As I mention above the standard solution of booting up in the OS install disc & going to utilities/reset password and then reset the ACL just refuses to work for my main user account, although it did allow reset for the other accounts which had hardly any files in them.

I really & truly cannot believe the way software is written so consistently badly.