OS X Account Won't Open

May 14, 2005 5:32 AM

All of a sudden my wife's Mac OS X account won't open on our desktop (OS 10.3.9). We put in the password but the login bar just displays the blue and white candy cane bar (it's animated). And then it just hangs. I've tried correcting permissions but it didn't help. Anyone have any suggestions short of deleting the account and starting over?
posted by Taken Outtacontext to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Can you boot by holding down the shift key throughout the entire boot process? Did you install any new software recently--the in the last week or two? Did you add any new hardware, including RAM or peripherals? Did you boot it from the 10.3 system install disk and run the Disk Utility, both the permissions and repair options?
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:22 AM on May 14, 2005

First, my account is the admin account and I have no problem logging in. It's just my wife's account. I haven't tried holding down the shift key, but would that work if I'm trying to log in to a particular acct?

No new software or peripherals or RAM. I haven't tried booting from the system install disks. I was seeing if there was an easier way before doing that.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 6:40 AM on May 14, 2005

Can you login using the administrator account to back up her files? Did you try asking on Apple's Discussion Forums?

Deleting her account isn't really such a severe option, btw. You will be asked if you want to preserve her files & settings, and then you can create a new user with the same name and the system will associate her old files with it. (YMMV, though--backup first)
posted by bcwinters at 6:46 AM on May 14, 2005

Yes, holding down the shift key works when logging into a particular account. Hold down until the user screen, let up off it, log in, hold it down again all the way until the Finder loads.

Alternately, go in via the admin account, go to her user Prerences folder in the Library, and then find the last few most recently modified pref files (like, find the ones that are all modified in bunches within a minute or so of each other) and move them to the Desktop, then try to boot into her account. This works surprisingly often. There's also a program called Preferential Treatment that can analyze her prefs, but I find most often that the prefs validate fine but are still problematic.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:29 AM on May 14, 2005

If you boot into single-user mode, you can use the mv command as follows:

fsck -y
mount -uw /
mv /Users/username /Users/username.old

(Where username is your wife's user folder.)

reboot

When you log in again, a fresh, new /Users/username folder is created.

/Users/username.old is on the hard drive and contains all your wife's documents, desktop items, music, photos and application preferences.

Just move items from this "old" folder to the new username folder, as needed.
posted by AlexReynolds at 9:11 AM on May 14, 2005

Thanks for the suggestions.

I ran disk utility just to make sure. All seemed fine. I tried to create a new account (luckily I backed up my wife's data). That new account also hung on login. My daughter's account also hung. The only account not hanging was my own admin account.

When I deleted all accounts except mine and created a new account for my wife it would login but the screen was all blue. No menu bar or anything.

Finally I changed the initial system login to single user (my admin). I deleted my wife's new account and created another new account for her. This seemed to work. A brand new account. I moved my wife's documents from the backup and all seems well.

That being said, I'd like to know why this was happening. It wasn't as straightforward as some of you suggested it might be (not that you were wrong per se, but I'd like to know why I was getting this plain blue screen when I first created a new account and logged in. Also, why did my wife's and daughter's login hang in the first place?
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 7:20 PM on May 14, 2005