Deleting user in Lion taking forever...

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Level 2

263 points

Deleting user in Lion taking forever...

I'm cleaning up a computer to pass it along to another family member, and after creating a new account for the new user, I deleted my user account. I believe I set the option for the user account to be saved as a '.dmg' file – seemed like a good idea, but I don't need to keep the old user account.

Well, this was three days ago, and it is STILL 'Deleting Account'. No progress indicator, no idea when it will be done. No obvious way to cancel.

It's still doing something, as the HD is humming, and when I check with Activity Monitor, the disk activity shows lot's of data being written. It's currently up to about 138GB. Since there is only about 136GB in use on the whole HD, it does seem like it should be done now...

I'm sort of at a loss here. Is there some way to cancel? What happens if I 'force-quit'? I don't need to keep the old account, so I'm not concerned if it disappears, but I'd rather not scramble anything else important on the system.

Is there any way to get an idea of when it will be done?

Thank you!

MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, iPhone 4, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Dec 24, 2011 10:52 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

etresoft

Level 8

46,330 points

Dec 24, 2011 12:03 PM in response to Tor Lundgren

Reboot it. If the account still shows up afterwards, delete it again. You might need to run disk repair too. You will likely have to delete that user account manually.

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Answer 2

Dec 24, 2011 12:21 PM in response to Tor Lundgren

Deleting an acount may take some time, especially if his / her account has many GBs. I assume you interrupted the process when it began for the first time, and was not completed. My guess is that you should restart, and repeat the process, try to not interrupt it.

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Answer 3

Tor Lundgren Author

Level 2

263 points

Dec 26, 2011 1:52 PM in response to Tor Lundgren

Thanks for the responses.

Here's what happened. A few hours after I posted this note, I noticed that the disk activity had finally dropped off, and it no longer seemed to be doing anything much. The computer seemed to be responding normally.

The account, however, was still labeled as being deleted.

I figured that was enough of that, however, and closed the systems preferences window/application. It had to be force-quit, since it complained that it was still 'deleting a user account', but nothing bad seemed to happen. I immediately restarted system preferences. The offending account was still there, but without the 'deleting account' label.

I deleted it again, but this time opted for the simple 'delete immediately' option. This worked as advertised, and immediately.

Now, everything is working properly.

So, my conclusion is –– stick to the basic 'delete account' option, if possible, and be prepared for a long wait if you opt for the others. It does, however, look like you can interrupt this process without causing any problems.

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