[KP*]

Hi Guys,
I'm kind of in a rush because I'm late for work, but my PB is having a crisis and I hope someone can offer a solution or a hint here so I'll have a starting point when I get home.

Basically my comp seems to have forgotten all its preferences. My iTunes library keeps getting corrupted, for one thing. Then a couple apps (SpamSieve, iPhoto) act like they've never been run before when I start them -- SpamSieve had forgotten its registration. iPhoto wouldn't actually open after asking me if I wanted it to be the default photo handler -- it just crashes on launch now. So I tried to repair permissions, and no bad permissions were found. So I tried a restart hoping that would shake things up. Well it shook things up, alright! It restarts and my icons are reset to their default sizes, not sorted, etc. Basically all the things you set with command-j had been forgotten. And to make it worse, my dock icons had returned to the default apps. Clearly my PB is having a major case of amnesia. There's probably other problems that I haven't stumbled on yet.

I don't want to blame this on the security update because the iTunes library issue happened a few days ago (maybe with the iTunes update), but the rest of it just happened today, as far as I can tell. It seems like some files in my library must be corrupt or something, but I don't know what specific files control these things. I'm hoping somebody recognizes what causes this kind of problem.

Difficulty: I use Filevault. My SMART status says my HD is fine (which could be a lie, but I figured I'd include it).

I haven't gotten a chance to check much else. Doing a complete HD backup right now. Gotta leave for work. Any hints are much appreciated!

[capuchin]

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? Also, how much RAM?

If the amount of free space is less than your installed memory, kookiness such as you describe sometimes occurs...

[Randman]

You should have 10% of your hard drive or twice your ram (whichever is greater) free. Could it be power-related? Have you added ram lately?

Could create a new user and see if the problem persists. It'll at least help you narrow it down.

[KP*]

Thanks for your responses. I don't have any issues with low HD space (16GB free), and I have 1GB of RAM, which should be enough. I installed the RAM shortly after buying the PB two years ago and it's been fine.

I have a backup user just for these kind of situations, and my other user seems to be fine. All preferences are set and I can open iPhoto when logged in as that user, but still no luck with my primary user. So I guess something is corrupted with that user. I'm turning off FileVault now to see if that changes anything. When it's done I guess I'll just have to create a new user and hope everything's OK. I was considering turning off FileVault to troubleshoot a general slowness problem, so it's probably all for the best.

I will also run some hardware tests on my RAM just in case.