support issue- all help appreciated

[tactician1016]

On my Macbook Pro (mid 2010), I just had to replace the hard drive and restore from a Time Machine Backup. That part's done, but now I hit another pair hurdles. One, I can only boot in safe mode, as otherwise it goes to a blank blue screen forever.
When I do boot in safe mode... the password (which I wrote down and remember clearly) won't work. I tried the password reset trick in single-user mode, no luck.
Is there any way to fix this? I have a Time Machine backup drive, is there anything I can do?

 

[JediMeister]

A few questions: Did you partition the drive as GUID Partition Table and format the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before restoring? Was the backup one made with the same computer or was it from another Mac? Are you running 10.6 or 10.7?

Booting to a blue screen suggests an incompatible startup/login item. Not sure why your password would not be accepted in safe boot.

I would recommend doing an Erase & Install, setting up a temporary account, then applying updates, before ultimately migrating from the Time Machine backup, not restoring. Migrate only your user account, this will exclude the Applications and the Other files and folders categories.