Snow Leopard bug deletes all user data

[Flisker]

Computerworld - Snow Leopard users have reported that they've lost all their personal data when they've logged into a "Guest" account after upgrading from Leopard, according to messages on Apple's support forum.

The bug, users said in a well-read thread on Apple's support forum, resets all settings on the Mac, resets all applications' settings and erases the contents of critical folders containing documents, photos and music.

The MacFixIt site first reported the problem more than a month ago.

Users claimed that they lost data when they'd logged into their Macs using a "Guest" account, either purposefully or by accident. Reports of the bug go back to Sept. 3, just six days after Apple launched Snow Leopard, or Mac OS X 10.6. Users who said they'd encountered the bug said that they had upgraded their systems from Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard.

Specifically, Snow Leopard's home directory -- the one sporting the name of the Mac's primary user -- is replaced with a new, empty copy after users log-in to a Guest account, log out, then log-in to their standard account. All the standard folders -- Documents, Downloads, Music, Picture and others -- are empty, while the Desktop and Dock have reverted to an "out-of-box" condition.
"I had the Guest account enabled on my MacBook Pro," said a user identified as "tcnsdca" in a message posted Sept. 3. "I accidentally clicked on that when I went to log in. It took a few minutes to log in, then after I had logged out of that account and back into mine, my [entire] home directory had been wiped. All of doc, music, etc. gone."
"Add my parents to the list of people waxed by this bug," added "Ratty Mouse" today on the same thread. "Brand new iMac, less than one month old, EVERYTHING lost. Just as I convinced them to go Mac after years of trying."

On the thread, several users urged others to disable any Guest accounts to prevent any accidental data loss.
Some people were able to restore their Macs using recent Time Machine backups, but others admitted that they had not backed up their machines for weeks or months.
"Just my luck I hadn't made a backup since 11th August," acknowledged "rogerss" on a different support forum thread. "So annoyed now, in the process of restoring from Time Machine, but have lost loads of my work due to this fault."

Others users, however, had neglected to back up their Macs.
"Nooooo!!! This morning I had access to Guest Account and than all my data were lost!!!" bemoaned someone tagged as "carlodituri" last Saturday. "I had 250GB of data without backup and I lost everything: years and years of documents, pictures, video, music!!! Is it possible to recover something? Please help me!!!!"
Not surprisingly, users unaffected by the bug were reluctant to attempt to reproduce the problem. Some, for instance, wondered if the data loss would be triggered on Macs upgraded to Snow Leopard when the Guest account was simply set to "Sharing only," which is the default.
Apple did not respond today to questions about the bug.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._all_user_data

I find it funny that the bug is well over a month old and Apple had nothing to say about it.

[HotelUser]

It didn't affect me or most users at all. I don't know why it's such big news? Microsoft has loads of problems worse than this and they don't get a news cast for each one..

[GommeInc]

It didn't affect me or most users at all. I don't know why it's such big news? Microsoft has loads of problems worse than this and they don't get a news cast for each one..

Might be because Microsoft don't attempt to bury the competition with lies about reliablity and security? Also, this is quite a serious bug, compared to what you get with Windows at least :S Removing data from music and photo folders is incredibly serious... I can see why people call the OS lousy in terms of management with hard-drive and memory, even though it is suposedly based off Unix. I know of someone who upgraded, then downgraded because it worked out terrible the update. Snow Leopard seems to be the Vista of the OS/X world - bad for some, good for others.

[HotelUser]

Might be because Microsoft don't attempt to bury the competition with lies about reliablity and security? Also, this is quite a serious bug, compared to what you get with Windows at least :S Removing data from music and photo folders is incredibly serious... I can see why people call the OS lousy in terms of management with hard-drive and memory, even though it is suposedly based off Unix. I know of someone who upgraded, then downgraded because it worked out terrible the update. Snow Leopard seems to be the Vista of the OS/X world - bad for some, good for others.

If it's the Vista of OS X than it's a much smaller scale. Though Adium seems to hate SL.

[Recursion]

If it's the Vista of OS X than it's a much smaller scale. Though Adium seems to hate SL.

Fine for me? :S

And it is a huge issue, especially if people download songs off iTunes and they are stored in their music folders? They don't let you redownload them!

[xxMATTGxx]

Might be because Microsoft don't attempt to bury the competition with lies about reliablity and security? Also, this is quite a serious bug, compared to what you get with Windows at least :S Removing data from music and photo folders is incredibly serious... I can see why people call the OS lousy in terms of management with hard-drive and memory, even though it is suposedly based off Unix. I know of someone who upgraded, then downgraded because it worked out terrible the update. Snow Leopard seems to be the Vista of the OS/X world - bad for some, good for others.

Very well said.

Fine for me? :S

And it is a huge issue, especially if people download songs off iTunes and they are stored in their music folders? They don't let you redownload them!

Apple are cheeky like that >:[

[GommeInc]

You can't redownload music from iTunes? God, how is iTunes so popular?! Play.com and Amazon.co.uk, both of which sell MP3 tracks for cheaper than iTunes, allow you to redownload :/

It's also very cheeky that you can't see how much tracks are on their website, it seems you have to download iTunes to get a whiff of how much each track costs. Though it may just be me

[Papershop]

i had no problem with this? But i dont see why everyone is bad mouthing apples operating system. Look at vista when it was brought out. You could barely print something off.

[Agnostic Bear]

It just works.

[Flisker]

It just works.

You have confused me lol