Cant enter username at OS X login screen

[centrax]

Hi All,

Having a bit of a perplexing problem. After a recent reboot of my powerbook (10.3.8 and $HOME is filevaulted) I am unable to enter my username at the login screen. The name field does not seem to want to take any user input, be it a user name or tabbing to the password field. The password field is working fine in that I can type and the characters appear on the screen shadowed (copying and pasting from password to name filed does not work).

During troubleshooting I did manage to get one character to print in the name field by pressing the Fn key before it. I have not been able to get this working since.

Would any one have any ideas of any software issues or sticky keys that may cause this problem?

No changes were made to the powerbook prior to the reboot. It was uptodate on paches and have rebooted several times since the last security patch.

[fryke]

First, try to enable target-mode (Apple-T) at boot-time. If that works, we know that physically things are alright with the keyboard and its connectors (as the system recognises the "T" key). If that _doesn't_ work, it probably means that something hardware-related is broken or at least slightly damaged.

Either way: Try resetting the PRAM (Apple-P-R at boot-time), and if that doesn't do the trick, try booting from an installation CD-ROM or DVD. There you can try and fix things via the harddrive setup utility. Also repair permissions while you're at it.

[centrax]

I have tried resetting the PRAM but this makws no difference.

Using the DVD I reset permissions and checked for hard drive errors, all passed ok.

Using the DVD to reset the password I get the following:
- Instert install cd, and boot off it (holding down "c")
- Installer window appears prompting me to Select Language
- From the menu I sellect "Installer\Reset Password
- Reset password appears asking me to chose an OS X disk that contains password to reset, choices are the install cd and my hdd
- I chose my hdd
- As soon as I chose my hdd it drops me back to the "Select install language" screen
- Selecting english and pressing continue it brings me to the main OS X installation screen, which I dont do as I don't want to go down that path yet

Just tried booting with Apple-t (I assume lowercase) and this boots as normal, but the problem persists

Starting system in safemode also produces the same problem.

One thing I did find while doing some troubleshooting in Single user mode was the following log entry in /var/log/system.log:

Apr 7 08:18:24 localhost loginwindow[198]: Login Authorization failed (-60006)!

This entry being produced even if I don't try and log in.

I am not sure how hardware related this is as the password field works perfectly normally. It is just the name field with the issue.

[fryke]

If Apple-T "boots as normal" then something _is_ wrong even there. The "T" character isn't recognised at boot-time... In the password field, you don't really see what characters get entered, right?

On the other hand, in single user mode, you do, and there it works, right?

Have a FireWire harddrive you can install OS X to? Hmm... Or, well: Reinstall...

[centrax]

Single User mode drops me to a commanline root shell (no user name or password required to login). I've re-installed and things are back to normal