1

I had to go in to single-user mode because I couldn't log into my admin account, I made a new account and changed my admin password.

Now, on my first admin account, I can search for my files but everything is like it is factory reset? My wallpaper, and everything. I can only look things up, and once I do, they are on my laptop again. Help? Where are all of my files? How could I solve this?

What's more odd, I only had approximately 7.18 GB before I went into single-user mode. This meaning that my data is still obviously here. Please anyone? I'm clueless.

enter image description here

Improve this question
2
  • Try launching spotlight search ‘cmd + space’ and search anything like “e” or “app” and check if a blue bar appears between the text field and the individual search results, if so please reply
    – Harcker
    Commented Jan 11, 2018 at 18:05
  • Please don't do anything on your filesystem before booting from your recovery partition and running Disk Utility until you are sure your filesystem is OK and you can continue to write anything on it.
    – athena
    Commented Jan 11, 2018 at 18:36

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Let's see if I understood correctly: you had admin account A but you couldn't log in; you created admin account B and logged in with that, and changed account A's password, then you logged back in with account A but you found what seems the default "new account" environment (no data at all); BUT you can search your files and when they're found those icons will actually appear on their respective locations...? I can't see where "single user mode" (shift pressed at boot time) fits in this description: there's no need for single user mode to create a new admin account (even if you had self-login enabled on your only user account - bad idea! - you could boot with cmd-S and do "/sbin/mount -uw /" and then "rm /var/db/.applesetupdone" and then reboot to create a new admin account). I think that your SSD is 1. too full, 2. too small, and 3. has a (hopefully) lightly damaged structure... so boot with cmd-R and use Disk Utility to repair it. If this fails, try using DiskWarrior to rebuild the directory. Otherwise (if Disk Utility fails and you have no access to DiskWarrior) you could do this: 1. Log in with you B account 2. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (one month trial) and clone the internal SSD on an external disk, then disconnect it (do it now, seriously. Later you'll use it for a Time Machine automated backup). 3. Now you can format the internal SSD and install OS X from scratch, just boot with cmd-R and follow the on screen instructions. 4. Use Migration Assistant to import back your user A account from the external disk I hope this helps.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .