Trouble shooting

[hopshead]

Hey, guys. I am away from my new imac now, but my wife is using it and from what she has explained to me something weird happened. I wonder if this sounds familiar to any of you mac gurus. First, I had her user account all set up with administrator privaledges. I got all her documents moved over from an old linux pc, set her mail accounts up, and installed neo office. Before I came to work today I made sure everything was there and set up and working. She was using iphoto with some 2,000+ photos in it and apparently the app crashed from what she explained to me. She tried to terminate the app and couldn't so she manually killed the power with the power switch. when she logged back in she noticed she had to set her mail account up again as well as ichat. but, her address book still had all contacts in it. Then she searched for her documents and they were gone. Now, I know the documents were there this morning but I don't know if she did anything to them before this happened. she told me the only other thing she did today was change her myspace layout to a safari compatible one. What do you all think? Also, neo office had to be set up for a new user again.

 

[hopshead]

Update, apparently evertime the mac is rebooted, turned on, whatever, all her user settings are wiped clean and she has to input mail pop server settings as above.

 

[mad jew]

Did someone change the name of the Home folder? If so, here's how to fix it.

 

[MacBass]

How long did she wait to Force Quit? Sometimes it just takes a little patience, especially when you're scrolling through 2,000+ photos in iPhoto. Also, how much RAM does the machine have? This could certainly affect the response time of iPhoto.

I would assume the settings were reset to the defaults because those programs didn't have a chance to save any data. Manually turning the machine off should be a last resort, especially when setting up a machine.