Snow Leopard bug threatens user data, reports claim

Jonny Evans
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October 09, 2009
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Warning, warning: The latest Snow Leopard bug seems to threaten all your data, and it seems back-up has become essential, while Apple explores if the bug is just an isolated outbreak or a more serious matter.

There’s been a series of complaints across the last month of incidents in which users start their Macs up as normal only to find they’ve logged in as ‘Guests’ on their machine - with all the files and data held on their Mac in their own user account seemingly deleted.

A series of posts on Apple’s Discussion forums presently describe the problem. Here’s one description taken from these: “A day before the crash there was no Guest account folder in the /Users directory. Just prior to the crash a Guest account folder appeared in the /Users directory on my start-up disk (not the partition my home folder is stored on). Post crash that Guest folder has disappeared again.”

Seems the Guest account is created by default.

We’re still sifting through this information, but here’s a link to a Cnet report which may offer some kind of salvation. How to restore Lost home folder after logging in as guest in Snow Leopard. (Good old Cnet, this report was published last month, but we hadn’t heard about it or the problem, so we figured many of you may also benefit from knowing about it.)

The problem isn’t noted as patched within Apple’s most recent )S X 10.6.1 update.

Links to the relevant Discussion threads we’ve tracked down so far..

Discussion One
Discussion Two
Discussion Three

If anyone out there knows more on this, or can suggest any way to deal with lost data, or avoid it, share it with the rest of the community in comments.
 

Comments (23)

ratGT (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 4:40am

This looks like is happening on 'specific Macs' or configurations, because I certainly have NOT come across this issue on any of the Macs that I have installed Snow Leopard on. I guess we'll have to wait and see what is the cause of this and which configurations it affects (or if any third-party applications/system add-ons are the cause of this)

So, in other words, it seams like it's the 'Home' folder of the user that is being wiped-out on the system's affected by this bug. For the time being, just to be on the safe side, drag & drop your Home folder onto an external Hard Disk...

Gleep (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 4:58am

This exact thing happened to my 1 year old Mac Book Pro. Lucky for me I had a recent backup thanks to Time Capsule and managed to restor it from there. Still a pain though as I had no machine for 2 hours while the backup took place!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 5:31am

This can happen if you had the guest account enabled under leopard. If you then log into the guest account under snow leopard it will wipe your main user account data.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 6:38am

Why is this article accompanied by a hybrid photo of a snow leopard + Steve Ballmer?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 6:47am

As a tangent - does it seem that there are more beachballing issues surfacing since the clickbeep Hard Drive fix a while back?

Michael (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 7:20am

I was having a lot of beach ball issues, but I reset the System Management Controller. I was locking up a few times an hour for up to 30 seconds at a time and after this reset, I haven't seen any problem. It's easy to do and Apple has the instructions on their website (for newer computers you just turn off the computer and hit shift-control-option power, nothing seems to happen, then turn the computer on regularly).

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 8:34am

That sounds like a virus makers wet dream - to delete the profile and related data.

Lots of PC viruses don't even do that.

Software Bug or Virus - Unintended or intended destruction.

Speck (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 10:11am

"...it seems back-up has become essential"

Since when was this _not_ the case?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 12:18pm

I agree, but your OS is NOT supposed to trash your entire darn user profile!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 10:22am

2nd partion without rights is then best I guest like I have....

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 11:29am

majority of virus don't destroy data, they collect it to get your personal id, cc, passwords, etc., all of which is much more valuable

this is a bug in the os, just don't enable guest :D

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 11:30am

letter-spacing

MrMotionBlur (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 12:39pm

Just had a thought about this:

Guest accounts are erased when logging out, aren't they?

So, if the userID of your personal account is mixed up with the guestaccount's id, that could explain why the wrong userhome dir would be erased.

Sounds like a bug that can be squashed easilly.

For now, keep those backups up to date!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 4:42pm

I like to know more about this! One who makes the hardware should make the software? Like ... safari for windows!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 6:06pm

Have those that have had this happen to them confirm whether or not they had placed their user data on a separate partition to the OS?

A brief description of how they upgraded to Snow Leopard (fresh install or upgrade, whether they used the migration assistant and any unusual steps, particularly if keeping the user data on a separate partition) would also be useful to try and pinpoint any common factors.

Windows 7 (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 8:18pm

Hi. I'm a Mac. I'll delete everything on your hard drive. Luckily my users are so blinded by my pretty outsides that they just grin and bear it.

MacPress (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 8:46pm

normally no one open guest user feature

Windows 7 (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 9:08pm

I'm magic. I just work.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 10, 2009 - 7:56am

I am SOOOO glad I did not upgrade to Snow Leopard. What's the point -- just to get some nice GUI touches, and extra snappiness? Leopard is mostly ok - except for Mail which continues to be temperamental with Gmail IMAP, and still won't consistently shut down.. But mostly Leopard is really stable.

Since I use my Mac to ultra critical work, i.e. work that I get paid for, and can get sued if I don't do it right -- I cannot afford to beta test Snow Leopard for Apple, even if I have to pay Apple only $30 for the privilege.

I'm really grateful for all you guys who are beta testing Snow Leopard right now. I'll get on board around 10.6.8 when it is ultra stable -- when when you guys are getting ready for the next beta test for 10.7

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 10, 2009 - 7:58am

I am SOOOO glad I did not upgrade to Snow Leopard. What's the point -- just to get some nice GUI touches, and extra snappiness? Leopard is mostly ok - except for Mail which continues to be temperamental with Gmail IMAP, and still won't consistently shut down.. But mostly Leopard is really stable.

Since I use my Mac to ultra critical work, i.e. work that I get paid for, and can get sued if I don't do it right -- I cannot afford to beta test Snow Leopard for Apple, even if I have to pay Apple only $30 for the privilege.

I'm really grateful for all you guys who are beta testing Snow Leopard right now. I'll get on board around 10.6.8 when it is ultra stable -- when when you guys are getting ready for the next beta test for 10.7

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | October 11, 2009 - 3:54pm

Hey, I got a version of System 9.5 if you want. It might make you feel a little bit more "secure." But then again, that might make you a little "wild" and "out there." But if you're felling a little "crazy," it's all yours.

P.S. This might be your experience, but everyone I've talked to, including myself, Snow Leopard is actually MUCH better than what I was experiencing with regular old Leopard. More stable, faster, more reliable and a lot less headaches.

AppleFan10YearsAndCounting (not verified) | October 17, 2009 - 10:07am

This happened to me, too. Unfortunately, when I clicked "restore" on my back-up hard drive, it erased the back-up, too! Been 2 places to try to recover data on my computer. No luck. Am now attempting to recover from the back-up hard drive. -- Nasty, nasty bug! But am using borrowed PCs in the interim, and really want my Mac back. After working on PCs for a week, I am more firmly a Mac fan than ever.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 05, 2009 - 10:18am

This past weekend we bought a new macbook.  I already had the latest versions of  OS X on my year old macbook and bought Snow Leopard to upgrade the operating system at the suggestion of the sales person at the Apple store.  Since upgrading the OS, programs are crashing that never did so (such as TextEdit, Word, Firefox).  I tried repairing the permissions files, but that has had little effect.  No data has been lost so far, but this is damn annoying.

Anyone having this problem?