New User Account: Blue Screen of Death

[nickwalters]

Hey,

I have a late 2009 27" iMac running Snow Leopard with one main admin user account, with no problems.

When I add another user account and attempt to log into the new account at startup or using the fast user switching menu, the blue screen of death appears. The longest I've left it is about 2 hours, and it didn't progress from there at all. The only way to get rid of it is to restart the computer and log in using my main account. I've deleted the new user account and tried again several times, and with different usernames.

Please could you suggest a way to fix this? Is it a problem with disk permissions or the location of my home folder?

Thanks!
Nick.

 

[r0k]

I would start by backing up your important stuff. Next I'd do an archive and install of OS X. I find this fixes many "common issues" and takes a lot less time than proper diagnosis. In your case, it sounds like some default files that get copied to a new user account have been corrupted. An archive and install would put the files back as they should be and you should be able to create a new account and switch to it at will. Of course you'll have to sit through whatever OS X update has occurred since your OS DVD came out. Generally a combo update is about a 1 gig download.

Hope this helps...

 

[discounteggroll]

repairing permissions won't hurt, your current home folder has nothing to do with it. I would backup as said, and archive/install SL. You can also try running a verify disk or check for bad blocks/sectors if you have access to tech tool pro or similar diagnostic software

 

[nickwalters]

Thank you both for your advice.

I've attempted many times to repair permissions. There are always quite a lot of unresolved attempts to repair, but I assume they're not so important (many are to do with Java or Airport). Verify disk shows no problems.

I assume an archive and install is done using the DVD that came with the computer, and that it shouldn't delete any files from my computer (unless something goes wrong)? I just want to check because I have enough storage space to back up my documents, photos, music etc. but not movies, which aren't as important to me...

Cheers!