Mac OS X Snow Leopard - The Snow Leopard Bug

This just in: Snow Leopard has a bug and it’s creating some problems. As of October 12 2009, a critical bug has been detected by users; it reportedly wipes out a users’ account information when they open or close “guest” accounts on the operating system.

It seems as if data in a user's home folder can apparently be erased if and when a user logs onto a guest account. According to message board entries by panicked Snow Leopard users, the flaw seems to have the largest impact on guest accounts that were both created and enabled before Snow Leopard was on the computer. Many users are reporting the entire contents of their home folder has been erased after they logged into a guest account and then logged back into their own account.

Because the bug is currently in full effect, there are no numbers available as to how many users it has affected, but it seems to have occurred often enough to have resulted in several threads on Apple's online support forum. Allegedly, this has been an issue since Snow Leopard was released during August of this year, but no one paid immediate attention until it started affecting more users who downloaded the latest Mac OS X. Some users have been detailing this critical Snow Leopard flaw in comment threads dating back to Snow Leopard’s inception several months ago, but apparently little has been done to rectify the situation.

What users have figured out is that the Snow Leopard error isn't predictable or able to be replicated. Many are attempting to work around the issue by disabling access to guest accounts on their computer. Thankfully, it has also been discovered that any lost data can be restored from the home folder if Apple’s backup software (Time Machine) is running. In order to accomplish a successful recovery, users must hold down the “C” key during start-up, and then click the “restore from backup” tab from the utilities menu.

This glitch wasn’t mentioned in Snow Leopard’s most recent upgrade to 10.6.1 (the one that included all the new features), but many are hoping it will be repaired soon. Hopefully, this is the last of any major problems for the new Snow Leopard operating system. Knowing Apple and their commitment to putting out quality products, I would imagine it will be a quick fix.