Boot Problem after crash: Safe mode doesn't work, User Account home not visible

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Level 1

8 points

Boot Problem after crash: Safe mode doesn't work, User Account home not visible

Hello all,

On sunday i was animating stuff with After Effects, other adobe CC apps were opened too to create assets. Did quite a few renders followed by encodes to various formats. The imac 27inch 2010 did the job perfectly. After renders and encodes had finished i started to upload the files with Safari to cloud space (All other apps still opened but idle). Then something weird happened. A spinning beachball that immediatly froze (entire screen) for a couple of seconds. When it started spinning again, everything was really sluggish and unworkable. I started to force quit applications as soon as i got the chance.

In an opened finder window i saw that on the left column, my 'home' (account username) dissappeared while the system was constantly spinning it's multicolored beachball. It all took really long - too long so i decided to just keep pressing power to force quit entire system.

After a min. or so i tried to fire it up again. Took 5 mins to show Apple Logo and progress bar, and it didn't get past the progress bar to login screen.

Tried to reset PRAM, reboot, same. Can't boot into SAFE mode as it stalls on Apple logo and progress bar.

Booted into recovery mode, ran diskutility on the HD; didn't report any errors. The result is still the same. Simple can't get to the user login.

Booted the system from a backup clone (10.10.5) and browsed the Macintosh HD. When i go into /Users/ via the Finder all i can see is a shared folder. Where is my account folder? Decided to browse to Users folder on Terminal. A ls -l show me shared folder and my account folder. When i type 'open accountfoldername' it opens in the finder. (Files can be copied etc...)

So... without further messing around, i started to clone the Macintosh HD to an external disk using CCC, and made it bootable. This morning it was finished. When i tried to boot from the clone Startup Manager didn't list the drive :/

I've made a lot of working clones before, so i'm pretty puzzled what's going on.

Any one knows what could be causing the invisble account folder (home) folder on the Macintosh HD? Is this related to not being able to boot? And the clone problem?

PS: i've done a 'chflags nohidden' on the invisible userfolder on the cloned drive which made it appear again, still it's not booting...

iMac 27", macOS 10.12

Posted on May 21, 2019 5:06 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

May 21, 2019 9:20 AM in response to BramDB

Does the clone show if you restart with the option/alt key held down?

Do you have a backup you can restore from?

Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart). Run Disk Utility and select First Aid. Then re-install the OS.

Reinstall from macOS Recovery

OS X Recovery

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

May 22, 2019 8:27 AM in response to BramDB

You are welcome. That is definitely a possibility since it will boot off the USB and clone. It may not help, but try running/posting the Etrecheck report. Try running this program in your normal user account, then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy Report” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown. If the log won’t post, try posting it in Pastebin and provide a link in a reply Pastebin

Etrecheck – System Information 10.10 and later

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

May 22, 2019 9:34 AM in response to BramDB

RMEFirefaceUSB

I don't know what program the above is, but the report shows it isn't functioning correctly. Try quitting the program or uninstalling it to see if that helps

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later. Please post if this worked or not.

Isolating an issue by using another user account .

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Answer 4

BramDB Author

Level 1

8 points

May 22, 2019 4:18 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric.

Ok, so cloned drive now boots (after i did the chflags nohidden on useraccount folder).

Tried to boot recovery Volume, didn't work.

Tried to run Diagnostics by pressing D... started Internet Recovery but didn't get past the World icon telling me 'This is gonna take a while'.

Booted from an external usb with High Sierra installer, fired up Disk Utility and did First Aid on the Macintosh HD, no errors found, all OK. Installed High Sierra which took a long time. Ran OS updates and installed them (another long wait).

So without anything else installed, when it rebooted it started up normally (apple logo appears fast, like it was before), but after user login and on the desktop it's all back to really sluggish and not workable behavior. A lot of beachballing going on. Starting an app takes a long time and goes to 'not responding' a lot. So there's definitely something wrong, and i don't know what.

It's now checking RAM with Rember. If those results come without errors, i suspect it's still the HD even though no errors are reported. Does this sound reasonable?

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Answer 5

BramDB Author

Level 1

8 points

May 22, 2019 9:22 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric,

Rember (the ram test app) reported this:

Total execution time: All tests passed! Execution time: 2515 seconds

Etrecheck report:

https://pastebin.com/ABWcJ2Hh

So, after doing all the tests, the reinstall etc... I still don't know what is wrong :/

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Answer 6

BramDB Author

Level 1

8 points

May 22, 2019 9:45 AM in response to Eric Root

Ah that's just my sound card driver that I need to unblock.

I installed it then rebooted but didn't yet click in security to allow it. THat's not the issue, I'm sure.

Just did one more thing after reading up some more. Tried DriveDx... and that report tells me it's the drive after all.

Check here:

https://pastebin.com/P5ppYSWv

Tried an additional short self test too, which errored out 2 times at 10% (Completed: read failure).

Time to wrap it up in it's box, and drop of for repairs. SSD time it is.

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Answer 7

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

May 22, 2019 10:21 AM in response to BramDB

If you want to try installing a new drive yourself, you can look at the link below. They have on-line instructions on how to replace the hard drive. I replaced the hard drive in a 2008 iMac following their instructions and had no problems.

Other World Computing

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