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(young) pioneer · Aug 23, 2006, 02:22 AM

Hi there
working on a 12" PB
I have 2 accounts on this machine: my 'personal' account (admin account) and my 'work' account.

It's no problem for me to login to my personal account but if i logout to go to my other account it asks to type my password (which is normal) and then it showes the desktop picture and only the SpotLight Icon in the upper right corner togehter with maybe 2 cm of the menu bar (where the Spotlight icon is).

It basically stops there, can't see harddrive, any desktop icons, or the rest of the menu bar... so the only way out is to restart and use my personal account...

Don't know what's wrong. This happened once before but that time i just restarted and logged into my work account after restart, wiithout problems.

so now it's back, and it sucks!

Please help!

thanks!!

reader50 · Aug 23, 2006, 02:58 AM

Can you click on an application in the Dock and have it come up normally? The symptoms you describe can be caused if the Finder fails to start up. That can happen if there is a corrupted bundle on the Desktop, something that sends the Finder for a crash-restart loop.

Also, do the Console logs show anything interesting?

(young) pioneer · Aug 23, 2006, 03:17 AM

Hi, thanks for your reply,

the Dock won't show up either, impossible to get any console logs or whatever (or at least I don't know how to)

So the only thing I see is the desktop background, and the spotlight icon with just a small part of the Menu bar. And the only thing i can do is restart.
If I mouse over the Spotlight icon the rotating beachball shows up. If the mouse is elsewhere I just see the arrow...

Will try to run DiskWarrior tonight, don't know if that will help though. Any other programs that I could run from my personal account to fix whatever needs to be fixed?

thanks!

Big Mac · Aug 23, 2006, 05:14 AM

At the very worst, you could move your files over to a new account.

reader50 · Aug 23, 2006, 11:53 AM

You can reach the Console from your personal account right after the restart.

/Applications/Utilities/Console.app

Click the Logs tab at the top, the "console.log" will be highlighted when you open Console. Interesting messages may be there. Also click on the "system.log" and scroll back before the restart messages. There may be interesting stuff there too, concerning why the account doesn't want to open.

Big Mac may be on the right track. While the work account can certainly be fixed somehow, it's likely faster to create a new work account and copy the files across.

JKT · Aug 23, 2006, 01:31 PM

Before you do anything else, hold down the shift key as you log in. (In 10.4.x) This will disable all third party software and fonts, stop your startup items from launching and clear your font caches etc. In 10.3 it will stop third party software from loading.

I suspect that you probably have a corrupted font or other cache and this will likely solve the problem. If it works, log out and then back in normally (without the shift key). If you successfully log back in that time, it was a corrupted cache. If it doesn't then there is a third party software conflict that you'll need to identify.

(young) pioneer · Aug 24, 2006, 08:01 AM

Thanks for all your replies. this morning i started up again and it just worked... like nothing happened. Will check the console thing over the weekend, when i have more time

thanks again