Can't login

[Jaren]

I have an emac running osx 10.3 (I believe)
I have two user accounts set up, one with administrative privilages and another account that does not get used. They are both password protected.
I can not login to the administrator account. I should clarify, the password is accepted, however, it seems to be logging in and then going right back out to the login screen. I am able to get into the second account. I have tried resetting the password but that doesn't seem to do the trick. It will recognize a wrong password.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Jaren

 

[Ric]

Hi Jareen and welcome,

first thing before we 'try any' maintenance tasks you should always make sure that you are backed up...

Try this and let us know what happens.

1) Reboot the Mac with the OS X disk 1 (Install)

Put the cd into the drive, restart and hold down the letter c on the keyboard till it boots up

This will bring up the "Installer" quit out of that, and then on the cd in the utilities is a program called Disk Utility open that and do a "Repair Disk" and then do a "Repair Permissions"...

Once this has done reboot, hold down the eject key so that the cd comes out, then try the Admin account again...

If this doesn't work we'll try something else.

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

One quick thing to try go to the folder...

/Users/your admin user/Library/Preferences/

and delete this file

com.apple.finder.plist

then reboot and try again, this file is the Finder prefence file and may have got corrupted...

...if it won't let you delete it, let me know and we'll do it via the Terminal.

regards

Ric

 

[Jaren]

Hi Ric

Thanks for the advice. I can't access that file path you mentioned in your second post. I also can't really back up my information as I can only access the guest login.
I tried repairing the disk permissions as you mentioned but the problem still exists. It still accepts the password then kicks me back out to the login screen.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks

 

[Ric]

When you say you can't access the folder...can you try this way...

or is it not allowing you to see the folder ?

regards

Ric

 

[Jaren]

I tried going to that file path (/Users/my name/Library/Preferences/)
It won't let me access the library folder from the guest. I don't have sufficient access privilages

 

[Ric]

OK.

Well we'll do it the other way...

Restart your Mac and hold down Command + S this will boot you into "Single User Mode".

This will give you a prompt...

from there type this:

cd /Users/computer/Library/Preferences/

change 'computer' to your username !

This will now put you into that directory, now we will delete the preference file.

rm com.apple.finder.plist

Then type,

reboot

give that a go.

regards

Ric

 

[Jaren]

No luck there either.
When I type all of that in, I get:
"override re ------- 501/501 forcom.apple.finder.plist?" I wasn't sure if it was asking me for confirmation so I typed "y" (for yes)
Then it says "rm: com.apple.finder.plist: Read-only file system
Localhost: /users/computer/library/preferences/"

I'm stumped. I am hoping you've seen something like this before or have a great idea that we haven't tried yet.

Jaren

 

[Ric]

Ok same steps as before but try..

sudo rm com.apple.finder.plist

instead of

rm com.apple.finder.plist

it should ask for your password, enter it then do the reboot.

regards

Ric

PS

everyone seems to wake up when I'm ready for sleep ! ;-)

 

[Jaren]

I'm in Canada so I just got back from work. I'll give it a try. Thanks for all the help!!

 

[Jaren]

I just tried and got the same response after I type sudo rm.

 

[Ric]

Apologies, doing too many things at once...

Restart your Mac and hold down Command + S this will boot you into "Single User Mode".

This will give you a prompt...

from there type this:

/sbin/mount -uw /

The spaces are important, the above line is the bit I'd missed out from before...shouldn't stay up so late !


Then as before...

cd /Users/computer/Library/Preferences/

change 'computer' to your username !

This will now put you into that directory, now we will delete the preference file.

rm com.apple.finder.plist

Then type,

reboot

give that a go.

regards

Ric[/QUOTE]

 

[Jaren]

Ok. I believe I deleted that file. I did this twice and the second time around, the command prompt said "no such file or directory"
Unfortunately this doesn't seem to have done the trick. It still recognizes my password and boots me back out to the login screen.

 

[Ric]

Okay put the install cd back in and boot from that,

there is a reset password utility...try changing your password to something different.

just to see if that works...while I have a think !

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

Another option to try...

reboot into 'Safe Mode' restart and hold down the shift key !

Press the Shift key again after typing your password but before clicking the Log In button.

Let me know if this boots ?

regards

Ric

 

[Ric]

If this doesn't work you might be best doing an Archive and Install, this will preserve all your Data and will allow you to get working again...

Have you got plenty of free space on your Hard drive ?

regards

Ric

 

[Jaren]

I tried changing the password. It was one of the first things that I tried. No luck there though. It recognizes the password - it just loggs me right out when it opens up.
Safe boot also doesn't work. It took a long time to boot up and get to the login screen. Once there, I get the same problem.
The problem with doing an archive and install is that I have no idea where my iLife '05 disk has gone. I'm not sure that I can find my Tiger upgrade disk either. I just have the original panther disk that came with the system. I'm not sure how I'd archive the administrator account when everything is locked down. There's really nothing in the guest file that needs to be archived.

 

[Jaren]

I don't have a lot of space on my internal hard drive (maybe 20 GB out of 80) I do have an external drive that will hold everything. I've backed up some of my files a few weeks ago. I'm concerned about loosing my quicken data and a few other files. I can probably redo most of the files with the exception of quicken.

 

[Ric]

...The problem with doing an archive and install is that I have no idea where my iLife '05 disk has gone. I'm not sure that I can find my Tiger upgrade disk either. I just have the original panther disk that came with the system. I'm not sure how I'd archive the administrator account when everything is locked down. There's really nothing in the guest file that needs to be archived.

Oh,

Just to check are you currently on Tiger (10.4.x) and not Panther (10.3.x) as you said in one of your earlier posts ?

Time to start looking for those disks ? I don't think we can do much more without them.

20GB is plenty of room to do an Archive and Install, make sure that you click "preserve user and network settings". You will need your Tiger Disk for this !

Don't worry the archive and Install will keep all your data, it just installs a new 'system'.

Haven't been able to find any one who has got round this problem, without doing an Archive and Install.

The data in the Admin account will be preserved as long as you tick the box "preserve user and network settings", as will any data in the second account.

If you have a external hard drive then grab yourself a copy of either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and back up you hard drive.

These two pieces of software have the ability to 'clone' your hard drive. So if you back it up now, doing an Archive and Install won't make you any worse off.

Time to start hunting !

regards

Ric

 

[Jaren]

I have Tiger 1 revision out of date now.
How can I do an archive and install from the guest account? I guess that would be from the disk?