My admin account died; can't login?!

[hellatoms]

My admin account has died and I can't get past the blue screen when logging in. Here's everything I know:

I’m running the latest version of OSX with everything is kept up-to-date.

I had just finished burning a disc with Toast when the verification dialog popped up. Toast quit unexpectedly, followed by the Dock disappearing, followed by the (already opened) System Preferences window freezing, followed by the computer dropping to a blue screen, followed by me holding down the power button on my iBook 500 to reset.

When the computer came back up, it got past the Apple gray screen and the Welcome to OSX screen. It freezes at the blue screen where you expect the background, dock and menu bar to pop up. Every so often the screen flickers a lighter shade of blue.

I’ve tried using the “fsck –y” and found no errors, using commands on the open firmware (“reset-nvram” and “reset-all”), removing all peripherals, renaming my account directory (I’ve seen renamed it back to normal) and resetting the pram.

My harddrive is fine. From the single user command line, I can browse around the drive and see and modify all of my files. When I log in using another user account, everything functions fine.

I don’t have any system discs, I left them at home when I left for college (stupid mistake, I know, but I thought OSX was near bullet proof). The chances of finding another OSX is impossible, sadly, so I can’t copy working system files from anyone else. I searched the forums but can't find a solution.

Any ideas?

 

[Giaguara]

can you log in as root?

 

[jove]

If you log in from anaother user you can still accomplish many tasks by doing a su in terminal or clicking the various lock buttons and using the admin user and pass.

From your non-admin account
Open terminal
su adminusername
enter password
cd ~
mv Library Library.old
Close the terminal and logout
Login as the admin.
Your admin user's library probably got screwed up. Moving the library and loging back in will give you a fresh version.

Hope this helps.

 

[hellatoms]

Yep, that fixed it. I don't know why I didn't think of having the Library default.

Jove, thanks a lot. Giaguara, I'm guessing you were heading towards the same solution, thanks as well. I don't know what I did to screw things up, but thanks to you guys I learned a lot.

Gotta go redo all my settings.

 

[jove]

Now you can move stuff you installed from the old library to the new as needed (scripts, screen savers, application support items, etc)