Please help!!!

[shifty_uk]

I came in tonight, turned my mac on and everything on the desktop has been restored to its default settings. The wallpaper, the dock, the desktop icons, everything is gone.

All my applications are there, my movies, my music but there's nothing in my documents folder, I have no bookmarks, and all my desktop files and folders are gone! OMG, I had a lot of important work in my documents folder!

I've done nothing unusual with the computer today other than - when you open the finder, there's folder with my name on it and a little house icon....I changed my name to have a space in it? Would that have caused this?

Is there no way I could restore the system to an earlier date?

 

[shifty_uk]

Right, I've just went into the users folder and all my documents are there under the username with the space! How on earth do I get this and all my settings back?

Apologies, after earlier problems this has all freaked me out!

 

[Vonhelmet]

I came in tonight, turned my mac on and everything on the desktop has been restored to its default settings. The wallpaper, the dock, the desktop icons, everything is gone.

All my applications are there, my movies, my music but there's nothing in my documents folder, I have no bookmarks, and all my desktop files and folders are gone! OMG, I had a lot of important work in my documents folder!

I've done nothing unusual with the computer today other than - when you open the finder, there's folder with my name on it and a little house icon....I changed my name to have a space in it? Would that have caused this?

You mean you edited the name of the home folder? Yeah, that'd do it. Change it back and it should be OK.

Is there no way I could restore the system to an earlier date?

I assume you're not using Time Machine, so no, there probably isn't a way.

 

[Spyhop]

That's a.... very special folder

 

[AdWright]

Was the problem sorted by renaming your home folder?

If you do actually want to change the name of this folder, do so by following this method

Oh, and for the love of God, implement some sort of backup solution!

 

[shifty_uk]

Nope, I can't rename the folder unfortunately. Hopefully this illustrated the problem:

As you can see, I renamed the home folder to have a space and now it's created a user folder with the spaced name.

Within the spaced folder, contains all my documents, music, libraries etc.

 

[Feek]

Go to System Preferences, Accounts.

Click the Padlock to unlock it (enter your password), then right click your account name and select Advanced Options.

You have a 'Home Directory:' field there. Use the Choose button to select the directory you want to be your new home directory.

Restart your Mac.

That should sort you out.

 

[shifty_uk]

Thanks Feek, I'll back everything up and try it!

 

[Feek]

That's the technique I used to move my home directory onto a separate hard drive, works a treat. Good luck

/edit - You'll need to manually copy all your files to the new location from the old one.

 

[shifty_uk]

Got it all sorted - Thanks guys.