Corrupted primary user account? / 10.6

[kirkbross]

I am helping a friend with his Mac. He experienced a total freeze/crash and now when he boots, his primary admin login keychain or account appears to be corrupted. When you enter an INCORRECT password, the dialogue "shakes" as per usual. When he enters the correct password it goes into an endless loop with a blue screen and the spinning "progress gear" (not beach ball) intermittently appearing and disappearing (and a slightly different shade of blue background).

I helped him create a new user account from a single user boot using terminal commands and we can get to desktop and everything is fine in the new account.

Is there a way to delete the old/corrupt login keychain from within the new account, or otherwise restore the original account?

Naturally we did disk repair and permissions repair.

 

[kirkbross]

Perhaps a more succinct question...

Is it possible to delete a LOGIN keychain for one Admin account while logged into a different Admin account?

 

[Elbert C]

I'd try booting into Safe Mode first, and then try repairing the disk with Disk Utility and repairing permissions after a rebooting your Mac normally.

Twenty steps to help diagnose and fix system issues