MacOS Sierra Account Stuck at Login

[Trey M]

Hi all,

I have a 2012 rMBP, which is my work machine. I have 2 admin accounts- work and personal- and up until very recently both accounts were working fine.

I've discovered that my personal account is unable to login. Once I type in the password and hit Login, it just spins infinitely and doesn't proceed to the desktop. My other work admin account is working fine with no issues.

I've verified my file system by using both Disk Utility (startup) as well as Onyx, however the issue still exists. I've also reset my PRAM and SMC, still the same issue. Even when trying to login to my peronsal account via my work account using account switching, the Login for my personal acct gets stuck and I have to force the power off.

The issue may or may not have come up with an El Capitan update that was released earlier this week. I used my personal account very soon before updating, however I never tried logging into my personal account until today. So, the issue may or may not be related to installing the latest El Capitan update (10.11.6)

Any ideas what I can do to repair my personal account? I have the latest version of El Capitan.

 

[chscag]

Try getting into your personal account in Safe Mode. Hold down the shift key during a reboot until the Apple logo appears. Afterward see if you can get into your personal account. If you can, there may be a 3rd party startup app or 3rd party kext in your personal account that's causing the holdup or corruption.

 

[Trey M]

Try getting into your personal account in Safe Mode. Hold down the shift key during a reboot until the Apple logo appears. Afterward see if you can get into your personal account. If you can, there may be a 3rd party startup app or 3rd party kext in your personal account that's causing the holdup or corruption.

Appreciate the tip. Unfortunately after I posted this I had the idea to try safe mode as well to no avail :/ let it sit for 20 minutes and still just spinning.

 

[Trey M]

Well, this was frustrating the hell out of me so I decided to upgrade to Sierra to see if that would remedy the issue.

I have a CCC backup from about 3 weeks ago just in case, however I didn't want to go through the whole process of reloading my bootable backup onto my SSD. I prefer to remain on the previous version of Mac OS (El Capitan in this case) since I prefer stability vs. bleeding edge for my work machine. I might make an exception if it's a really great update, but Sierra didn't do much for me.

Anyways, updating to Sierra fixed the issue! No clue what was going on, but happy to report that at least some login issues on machines may be remedied by trying a Sierra update, assuming you have another admin account which is functional. It's good practice to always have another admin account on your machine for this exact scenario. Especially given that new software can sometimes cause issues with login item caches.