Screw Up! System Rebooted During Repair Permissions, Now Broken

[mileslong]

I am a Mac veteran and should know better but I went brain dead and rebooted system after an update while the repair permissions function was running in the background.

Now my IMac will reboot and then start to load once I login but it hangs on the startup screen only showing my mouse arrow and the standard space startup background. It won't get to my desktop.

Am I going to have to reinstall the system? I have everything backed up on Time Machine but I can't access it from this position.

Any thoughts? I have a project I have to finish tonight and now I'm really screwed if I can't get in it. Thanks!

Mark

 

[webgoat]

boot to your install disc and you can repair disk on your startup volume... you can repair disk permissions as well but its not recommended doing so from an install disc as software updates change permissions on certain files and your out of date install disc could cause issues when repairing permissions... still probably not going to hurt at this point though

is it possible to boot in safe mode?

 

[mileslong]

thanks webgoat, i have repaired permissions and verified disk etc from every configuration i can think of, rebooted to coralis boot disk, backup external drive, etc. but no luck.

I can boot using safe mode and repaired permissions but that did nothing.

i used to be able to loginto original user but that user was corrupt (couldnt save preferences) so i had created another user which worked fine until the mishap with the reboot during repairing permissions.

now neither user works and i can never make it to the desktop, after entering login info it acts like it is going to go to the laptop but it hangs and i have to manually turn off imac and reboot.

 

[JediMeister]

If you can boot to the 10.5 install disc, you can use the Restore System from Backup feature, assuming you haven't been excluding system files from the Time Machine backup process.