07-16-2009, 08:41 PM

I am having a very strange problem with my sisters ibook G4. When she logs in with her user name it takes the password, but nothing happens after that(no dock, no menu bar, no desktop icons. Just the wall paper). When she logs in with another user name, everything works fine, the dock and everything is there. Both users on the computer are admin level......i cannot figure out why this is happening. any help will be greatly appreciated.

07-16-2009, 09:11 PM

I am having the same problem with an macbook white. It could be some settings in the user's startup preferences, or the user's home folder could be corrupt. In my case, I think the hard drive is going out. I was able to rename the user's home folder and when it rebooted, a new home folder was created and the user was able to log in. When trying to copy back the user's files, I kept getting error -36, which is an I/O error.

07-17-2009, 02:45 AM

It sounds like something is corrupt in your sister's profile. It could be a startup item which is causing the system to hang when attempting to load the profile. When you get to the login screen, enter her name and password as usual, then as soon as you click the login button, hold down the shift key. This will disable all startup items. If her profile loads, then you know you have a problem with a startup item. To remove items, go to System Preferences-Accounts, and click the Login Items tab. Remove items until you are able to login successfully. Hope this helps!