Creating Guest Account Crashes System Preferences

I have the same problem too! My machine also will not reboot properly when this happens and I have to hold down the power button to get it to reboot, even after tell Leopard to reboot from apple menu.

Same problem here. Would love to see a solution that does not involve an archive and install.

For what it's worth - same here.

Spinning beach ball and System Preferences not responding almost immediately after ticking "Allow guests to log into this computer". After a Force Quit, no applications will launch and shutdown/restart gets into a loop that requires holding the power key down for 5 secs to shutdown the computer.

All my accounts and setting were migrated with initial keychain issues that have since been fixed - I hope!!

Simon

It happened to me also, on my imac and my MacBook Air.

It seems that user account migration somehow confuses the "guest user" machinery, which totally trashes securityd which dies of sudden death and from then on nothing works on the computer.

The solution is to do the following in System Preferences:

0. Your system guest account must be disabled (it already is if you have the described symptoms).

1. Create new standard account with name "guest" and short name "guest".
IMPORTANT: short name must be "guest" - OS will suggest "guest1", but you must edit that into "guest".

2. Enable system guest account in System Preferences (check the "Allow guests to log into this computer" switch). It will work now that "guest" name is taken.
This action will create user account with short name "guest1" with all the properties of guest (clean-up after logout etc.).

3. Completely delete standard user "guest", which you created in step 1 (check "delete all data and folder now").

4. Disable system guest account (uncheck the switch).

5. Right-click on system guest account icon and choose "Advanced" or whatever (there is only one menu item anyway) and change short name from "guest1" to "guest".

6. Enable system guest account.

Voila. You now have working guest account (well, I have it, and hopefully you will, too)...

P.S. I am not sure whether you need to log-in/out/restart between steps. I remember I did some of that dance, but probably it is not necessary...

Thanks for the solution! That was driving me nuts. One other detail, which some might be tempted to do (like I did...) - don't change the path of the home dir from ~Guest1 to, say, ~Guest - leave it as /Users/Guest1. Inelegant, I know, but as always, form follows function.

In fact, you can rename the home dir safely, if you do it the way I did it.

1. Log in as guest with your new guest account.
2. Log off as guest and log in with an admin account. Disable guest account in System Preferences.
3. Check the Users directory. You will see that the guest dir (Guest1) was deleted after logging off as guest.
4. Go back to System Preferences, open the advanced settings of Guest Account and now you can safely rename the path of the home dir from /Users/Guest1 to /Users/Guest.
5. Now re-enable guest account.
6 The next time, you log in as guest, a new guest dir will be created with the correct name Guest.

That's it, you're finished.

Brilliant! You guys are geniuses! Worked like a charm!

Ok I screwed it up. I tried to change the dir from guest1 to guest. I can switch accounts but the scren keeps blue with the cursor. No menue bar, nothing. I can only switch it of by pressing the switchoff button and selecting reboot. Any ideas?

This was driving me nuts!!!! It had never worked since the computer arrived 2 months ago. Now it does!! Thanks a million!!

It worked like a charm in 10.5.4, but now crashes in 10.5.5 when re-enabling the Guest account at the very last step ???

It works up to the very last step and then the gear spins endlessly followed by force quitting System Preferences. When I try to reset the mac, I get a blue screen, spinning gear, blue screen, and so forth.

I have exactly the same problem on a brand new MacBook Pro.

Opened the box, made a generic user, applied updates etc, then migrated my home folder and apps from a TimeMachine backup of my old G4 PowerBook. I then went to enable the Guest account and the system crashes.

Is there a proper fix for this? Has it anything to do with migrating my home dir across?

Fingers crossed there is an update to sort this.

Tristan

Me, too. Exactly the same sequence of things occurs when I try to create a guest account. Has anyone found a solution to this?

NateP,

I followed the instructions further up on this page (by izidor and j vt )- and it worked perfectly!