blank desktop after login

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Jul 15, 2009
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I have a white Macbook that boots up fine to the login screen. While at the login screen, you can insert and eject a CD/DVD. After logging in, the computer seems to lock up. You can move the cursor but you get nothing loading, no dock, menu bar, desktop pics or shortcuts, etc. If you insert a CD/DVD at this point, you will not be able to eject it. I have tried a safe boot and safe login. Also, tried clearing the PRAM. I did a clean install with "Archive and Install" and preserved user settings. After it comes back up, same thing. I have deleted the cache folders, removed the launchagents, deleted all plists, etc. I tried cloning the drive, but the computer locks up after copying some files. I tried just copying over folders to another Mac but it always locks up after copying after a few minutes. Sometimes I do not get an error message, sometimes it errors out with error -36 and something about source can not be read or written to. Apple Hardware tests fine. booted to OS X install disk and did verify disk and repair disk and all comes back good. Also, did repair permissions and did not help. I did a clean install to a new external hard drive and it installed fine. When I told migration assistant to import user account from another volume on this Mac, the time to copy kept going up and up. Last time i looked it was at 30-something hours, I am guessing it is going to lock up or error out again. I did searches and found that it error -36 is an I/O error. I need to get the data off the drive. Does anyone have any experience with this error or have advice on how to proceed? I am pretty new to the Mac, is there a utility that I can boot to to test the hard drive more thoroughly? I tried the TechTool Deluxe CD, but it can not boot to that. Is this a hard drive issue or a motherboard issue?
 

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