All users disappear after install

It is actually Command-R not Option-R as indicated in the initial post.

Yes it was sacry for awhile there - but thankfully the solution worked and I am all good.

In my case - I can't recovery from my TimeMachine backup if I wanted to as the NAS drive I have my backups on is not working propelry with 10.7.

I am very serisouly considering a Pegasus R6 12TB unit instead of network attached. (got some other uses beyond backup for it as well).

Thanks for the clear info!

However, I get all the way to "Create a new Administrator account using the same exact short name and password as your old user account (same capitalization of short name is important)" but then it fails.

I click the little + to create a new admin account using the exact same name and password as previously, but the system simply allows me to do so i.e. it does not say "The Users folder already contains a folder with the same name as the home folder for this account".

Im 97% sure Im typing in the same account name as before I installed Lion.

Any clues what might be the problem? In case Im wrong about my previous account name, is there a log file somewhere where I can see the orginal account name?

Any help would be much appreciated!!!

HarryMcQ is a lifesaver. Thanks.

For my situation I could only log in as Administrator and could not see my profile.

After that all I need to do was follow HarryMcQ's instructions from:

• Go in System Preferences > Users & Groups

• Create a new Administrator account using the same exact short name and password as your old user account (same capitalization of short name is important)

• When you accept it will say "The Users folder already contains a folder with the same name as the home folder for this account"

• Select "Use Existing Folder" (and wait for a while if you have a lot of files

• Log out or reboot and you should see your old user there, try logging in

Then the only thing that seemed to be missing from my account profile was my Mail account settings.

Resynching my mail account settings via mobileme resolved this.

Also had an issue with my VMWare Fusion 3 boot camp (Windows 7) partition not running in VMWare. Not enough time in day to resolve this issue yet.

Just happy to be working again.

ok, after 10 days continuous and persistent and hectic searching (talking to apple as well) for a fix on the guest account after the lion upgrade, i finally made it work.

for some of us, only the user account was available in the login screen which means that we could not log in our user account accessing our data.

follow the steps:

1) remove the back of your computer

2) carefully remove the hard disk. (that is not difficult but make sure that you unscrew the tiny screws that hold the side metallic pegs too)

3) buy an external hard disk case SATA to USB, 2 1/2 inches. very cheap, bought mine for 12 euro.

4) connect your hard disk drive from your macbook or macbook pro to the external hd case you bought. by doing this, you transform the hd drive into a USb stick.

5) connect the external hd case to another computer. that will be read as a USB drive to the other machine so you can browse through all your files and folders.

6) go to: library/preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

7) delete the file

8) remove the hd drive from the external hd case

9) put back the hd drive to your macbook

10) power it on and now you can see your user account plus another account named "other".

the trick was to remove the hd drive and use it as a usb drive.

this is the only way to remove the loginwindow.plist file from the machine.

all other ways through the safari only mode will NOT work as the accessibility the terminal gives you is fictitious, is NOT real.

hope you can all get your mac back.

ps this fix only applies to users who upgraded their lion to 10.7.2 from 10.7.0 and after reboot the only account showing in the login window was the Guest Account with the safari only mode available.

I had been unable to access the root user after trying the original fix found in this post, and had already recently done a clean install of 10.7.2, not an upgrade, and not a Time Machine restore.

During the clean install I was fortunate enough to have made a backup installer disk and was able to install Lion on an external USB drive instead of removing my internal drive. Using that drive to startup my computer, I removed the loginwindow.plist file from my internal drive's OSX. No Change. All I get is the option for guest login, and it's not the guest login I allowed, but rather the simplified one that only allows Safari.

I should mention too that I have Server installed and have been fiddling with DNS. I read somewhere that this may be the cause. Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

What specifically happens when you try? One problem I've observed is that when you put in your password, the system appears to start the login process, flashes the screen briefly, then goes back to the login screen. I have encountered this several times over the last year, and the only method that fixes it is to simply reinstall Lion again. That repairs what ever was damaged by the initial Lion install. This has been going on since 10.7, but Apple apparently has not found a fix for it. I've had this happen on my own system after upgrading last year, and with a few of my clients. AppleCare advises that you reinstall. That's currently the only solution. I've tried several times to repair it in the past, but to no avail. My theory is that something gets damaged in the local directory where the user accounts are stored, but I don't see a way of fixing it.

If the login window allows for 'other' to login, I type root, or my username and it simply shakes off the password. There's no attempt to login at all. I have succesfully used the terminal resetpassword teqnique that's worked for others, but it's given me no change at the login window.

I've now also tried deleting the setup file in single-user mode. It allowed me to create a new admin account, and then ended up at the same old login screen. Only improvement was that the simple guest user account went away, and was replaced by a user name and password login screen. Still... None of my user names and password worked, including the new admin user account just created.

Have you reinstalled Lion yet? I wouldn't recommend making further changes to the user accounts unless you have a backup of all of them. If you do, it might even be better to erase and reinstall and then just restore your data. If you don't have a backup, I suggest you boot this Mac into target disk mode, and connect it to another Mac, so that you can copy your data over to another drive. If you live near an Apple Store, they could probably help you get a backup of everything. Depending on the situation, they may not charge you for it.

Several backups... but the real issue for me is that I just did a clean install last week. I just got everything back to just the way I like it and bam! It's got to have something to do with what I did on the server. I'm also afraid that If I use my Time Machine backup to retore the easy way, I may just reinstall the problem. So anyone with a successful solution please let me know.

I say do another backup by connecting the system to another Mac and boot it into target disk mode. You could also make a bootable drive, and then boot the affected system off of that, then copy your user data somewhere. You're probably right about the Time Machine backups possibly restoring the corrupt data that killed the system, but that depends on what you back up. Do you do a whole system backup with Time Machine, or do you just backup user data? I prefer to not do a whole system backup. I can reinstall my apps from downloads or disks, so there's no need to back them up. If you're running a server, you'll want to backup things like your DNS, DHCP, and Open Directory settings. I'm very obsessive about doing everything right from the start. If it's my own system (and I have a backup), I will experiment, but I won't do anything adventurous if it's someone else's computer.

Reinstall of Lion also failed. No change.

Then I suggest making a manual backup of your user data, erase and reinstall. You can make a Lion USB installer using this tool.

http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/

This should make things easier since you won't have to wait through the download. As long as you have Lion install app, this utility will build a USB thumb drive that you can use for your reinstall. Every time Apple releases a Lion update, I download the latest install app and make a new copy of my USB drive.

The best thing to do is to hit Command +R when the computer chimes, and open Disk Utility to attempt repairing disk permissions and or the disk itself. That way if this is successful, you do not lose any data and you will have resolved your issue. This should only be done by someone who is informed of this particular process. That being said, next time you have an issue it is best to Go into an Apple Store and see a Mac Genius. With the improvements that Apple has made in the past couple of years, even as an expert in technology myself- That is still the best option for my Macbook.