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Andrman · Nov 9, 2004, 04:16 AM

I'm going to give a quick background to my situation and then I'll tell you my current (large) problem.

I was running along in 10.3.5 with one of the happiest PowerBooks you ever saw. 10.3.6 came out, so I ran the Software Update. During the update (during the optimizing system performance section), I got a kernel panic. I rebooted. Wouldn't boot past "Login Window Starting."

I tried everything. Then I used Pacifist (put my 'book in Target Disk Mode) to reinstall the core packages. Still wouldn't boot past the "login window starting."

So then I restored most of my backup from Carbon Copy Cloner. Not everything, just most of it. The documents folder was a couple weeks old so I wan't to see if I could just repair the system files first. After it completed, applications would not open, specifically Disk Utility. I checked the crash logs... it turns out some part of the Disk Utility bundle had zero bytes. (This was also the problem with the loginwindow.app bundle; I checked the logs in single user mode somewhere along the line).

So I did an Archive and Install. I had to start with Jaguar since that's what my system came with. I chose the option to keep current users and settings. After that was finished, I tried to log in and it wouldn't take my old password. Oh well I thought, and I just booted from the Panther CD and updated to Panther. I chose the "upgrade system" option.

Once Panther installed, I went to log in and again my password wouldn't work. So I ran the Reset Password utility off the Panther CD and got it fixed. Now I'm up and running in my old account with all my old settings and documents. But my once Administrator is now a Standard user. And there are no Administrators listed in the Accounts pane. So I literally can't do anything... copy old libraries, run updates, etc.

What can I do?

Powaqqatsi · Nov 9, 2004, 04:42 AM

Why did you install Jaguar first if you have a Panther CD ? I would suggest to back everything up and do a clean install.

Andrman · Nov 9, 2004, 11:48 AM

The Panther CD is an update CD, so it won't let me go "back" to an older OS. I had 10.3.6 (sort of...), so the Panther CD would refuse to install.

Person Man · Nov 9, 2004, 11:50 AM

Originally posted by Powaqqatsi:
Why did you install Jaguar first if you have a Panther CD ? I would suggest to back everything up and do a clean install.

Probably because his Panther CD is one of the $20 upgrade CDs, which apparently won't let you do an archive and install unless you have Jaguar on the machine first.

Powaqqatsi · Nov 9, 2004, 12:11 PM

Oh I see

Madrag · Nov 9, 2004, 02:41 PM

that's one good reason to get the 'full' CD!

Andrman · Nov 9, 2004, 04:28 PM

Yes, it was one of those ones that they sold for cheap for owners who bought a G5. We bought a 5 license family pack, and my Dad used that on his G5 so I could bring these CDs with me to school.

Oh well, I reformatted and almost everything is back to normal now. Worse experience ever

CharlesS · Nov 9, 2004, 10:19 PM

For future reference, if something like this happens again, I'd suggest trashing /var/db/netinfo and /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and rebooting. This would cause you to go to the Setup Assistant on startup, and you would be able to create a new admin user.