Macbook Stuck at login screen...

Hello all,

im having a login problem with my macbook. its the early 2008 version. i have upgraded the hard drive from the stock 200 gb to a 750 gb about 6 months ago. havent had any problems untill this past week. im stuck at the login screen! if i type my password incorrectly the little password box will wiggle like normal but when i type it correctly the screen will flash white like its going to log in but loops back to the login screen. i have tried to repair disk permissions ect. tried booting while holding shift. tried booting while holding command opt P R. nothing is helping. when i repair disk or permissions it says everything is totally fine. does anyone have any ideas? restoring is a bit out of the question because i havent backed up my computer in a bit :/ and i have too much stuff that i simply can not lose. and i cant back up now because i cant login!

any ideas would be appreciated!

2008 macbook
4 gig ram
750 gb HD
nothing new was installed......

also i am running latest version of lion

Have your tried booting from a DVD? Assuming you either have your original Leopard DVD or perhaps Snow Leopard. Try booting that way and run the Apple Hardware Test. Also, have you tried booting in Safe mode?

well i am running lion so i hold opt to boot into the "disk". i have booted into safe mode with the same results (holding shift while booting) also i have cleared the PRAM (holding opt command P R while booting). booting up isnt the issue. its logging in. i have two users on my computer so one home folder being corrupted isnt the issue either.

thanks for your reply!

Any other ideas???

That's an unusual problem. Have you tried to reset the password to see if that will let you log in? You should be able to reset the password from either a boot DVD or the Lion recovery partition.

Well I have tried to change the passwords using my master password. Still same issue. I didn't know you could reset the password from a disk/recovery partition....

Yes, you can change the password with a boot DVD. However, the Lion Recovery partition does not have a way to reset the password - I just checked.

Also, I removed your cross post. Please do not cross post the same question to another forum. Only post to one forum and continue with the same thread.

Ok, so advantages of that?? Also, I cross posted because I wasn't sure if it was hardware or software.... I'm new here sorry!

sorry that may have seemed mean if you read it a certain way...... advantages of resetting my password off a disk over reseting it by my master password??