Panther losing settings, more at startup

Jim Martin reports an issue that we've never experienced in-house where Mac OS X 10.3.x appears to "forget" certain settings during the boot process - on seemingly random occassions:

"Twice in three months, on boot-up Panther returned everything to the 'new computer' status. Lost my Safari bookmarks, Address Book contents, Mail contents, mouse and other settings, and a few third-party items were also affected such as Kensington Mouseworks (can't even find the Mouseworks application now. Lost my internet connection settings and had to re-do. Folders and files on the desktop were placed in the desktop folder in the home folder instead of appearing in their original locations. Besides those problems, the plists etc. on my backup volume (which was already connected at boot-up) apparently also reverted to 'new.'

If you've expereienced a similar problem, please drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com with your system configuration, and any factors you think might have triggered the issue.

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