Too Many Web Redirects Error
This is a report of a problem I just resolved with a senior technician at Apple. I'm posting it to help others who may be experiencing a similar issue. I also filed this report to Apple Feedback
OS 10.7 (Lion)
Safari 5.1
Firefox 5.0.1
VirusBarrier X6 10.6.13
Problem: Unable to sign into many SSL accounts on either Safari or Firefox. Various symptoms depending on the particular site: Signing into MyYahoo would simply endlessly kick back to the signin page; signing into yahoo mail would endlessly cycle through URL's attempting to log in; signing into my chess.com account would bring up an error message saying there were too many web redirects from the server. But I knew the issue couldn't be the server since there was no problem signing into these sites with my other Leopard-OS macs--the problem only occurred on the one computer I installed Lion on.
Secondary Problem: A safe reboot holding down the shift key does not display the words "Safe Reboot" anywhere in the process. The only indication of a successful reboot is the fact that various startup icons were gone from the desktop toolbar.
After failing to resolve the issue clearing caches and cookies, resetting Safari, permission and volume repairs using Disk Utility, Techtools Pro 6, and DiskWarrier, I finally called Apple tech support and was eventually connected to a senior technician. After a safe reboot the problem disappeared--hence narrowing the problem to a 3rd party conflict. After ending the call with the tech guy, I later determined the problem to be VirusBarrier X6--which I had to uninstall and reinstall to finally resolve the issue.
Note, however, that the problem persisted even using a new temporary TEST user account -- ostensibly running without VirusBarrier. But I did not do a total restart into the TEST account; I logged out of my main account and logged into TEST. So I suppose VirusBarrier was still running in background.