Recover files from “Previous System” after reinstalling Leopard

Question

I have a serious problem with my desktop files in OS X. My system crashed and I installed Leopard, perserving users and network options.

The installation failed and I lost my desktop files. The system created a folder "Previous System", but inside it displays the account and the desktop like a white page.

Is it possible to recover my files?

Answer 1

You can safely just take everything from inside that "Previous Systems" folder. It contains the files of your previous installation.

• You will find stuff that was on your Desktop by going to Users/dimitris/Desktop (I assumed your username was "dimitris").
• The same goes for your documents, which should reside under Users/dimitris/Documents.
• If you had any applications installed, they're under Applications.

You can just drag and drop the files to where you want them.

If however your Previous Systems folder does not contain what you want, then you've probably lost your files and you need to restore from a backup.