User Account completely empty -- help!!

Hi All,

I'm hoping someone will be able to help me with this problem. I have an iMac OSX 10.5.8 and one of the user accounts is completely empty when I try to open it. I have 3 user accounts, and a guest account in addition to the admin account. None of the other accounts have this problem. When I log in to that account (which happens to be the one my hubby uses most frequently), all I see is a cursor and the space screen saver. There is no dock, no finder, NOTHING. Weird, I know. I am able to move the cursor around, but clicking on the center button of the mighty mouse doesn't bring up the calendar, calc and other little sticky notes like it does in the other accounts. Pressing buttons on the keyboard seems to have no effect. After a few minutes, the account automatically closes and returns to the main login page. What is going on here? Clearly, the account still exists, but NOTHING is in it. My husband is furious and wants to get a PC laptop. I love my mac, and I want him to love it too, so please help me... How can I restore his account to all its former glory? TIA

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

His account may have become corrupt or he possibly tried to change the name on the account or moved his home folder. Any of those things could cause what you saw on the screen. If you know your way around the Mac operating system, you might wish to log on using the ROOT user account and see if you can find his account items and save them to another account.

See this Apple KB article: LINK Be careful while using the ROOT login. Don't attempt to copy or move any system files. Only look for his stuff and when found, move to another account or the guest account.

If you're uncomfortable with the above, just create a new account for your husband and start over.

thanks for the tip!

Thanks, chscag! I was able to successfully create a new user account for my husband and move all his files from his old home folder to his new one. I deleted his old user account to prevent confusion (since I reused his old password) but retained his old home folder under users, just in case. I didn't mess with anything in the library, but was able to successfully move everything else. Still not sure what went wrong with his old user account, but it looks like the problem is fixed now. Thanks again.

99% certain the problem is someone tried to rename his home folder. Glad you got all the files back though!

schweb -- how could someone accidentally try to rename the home folder? Do you have to be in the root account to do this (pretty sure I haven't been)? Just want to know so I can avoid problems like this in the future. TIA

No, you don't have to be logged on as ROOT to rename or move your home folder. Lots of folks have made that same error - renaming the home folder because they didn't like the name or some such. Or moved it to another location because they didn't like where it was.

Doing that is like sitting on a tree branch and sawing it off behind you. ;P

The idea of logging in as ROOT is that it allows you to manipulate things around that you normally can not do when logged in as an administrator.

Anyway, glad you got hubby squared away.