2nd User can't complete log-in - hours of waiting

[PietVA]

I am the second user on my friend's Mac. He closed about 12 windows I had open, installed some updates, and when I try to log in, I type my password, and the blue barber pole begins to spin. It tells me I am logging in, but it just spins!

From his screen, I once just tried to log in, and it "turned" the cubic screen to the new blue face, and I waited there overnight for nothing.

I need to access my files on that "side" of the computer, to send out resumes and such. Could I

Log in somehow?

Become a 3rd user, and could those files be made shared files or accessible by everyone?

Is there some cache that is too large?

Is there a virus that does/did this to a Mac?

Thank you for any help! Piet

[yellow]

Definitely not a virus.

First thing I'd do, is log in as your friend's account, open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app, and type this stuff in:

su - shortusername

Where "shortusername" is the short username of your broken account. Hit Return. It will ask you for your login password, type it in. Now you're logged in as you, so you have access to your account. Now type in:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist ~

Hit Return. Now type:

exit

To log you out of the shell. Now try and log in as yourself through the GUI.

Post back whether that worked or not.

[kc0arf]

Hello,

Yellow's advice sounds very good here. The other thing that I can think of is that the disk permissions are messed up and need to be repaired.

Christian