Q: Macbook Pro freeze after login (Yosemite)

I have the same issue with Yosemite on a Mac Mini (late 2012) with 16gb RAM. Applecare has been unable to figure out what is wrong for almost 5 months of ongoing sporadic freezes. They first recommended the RAM upgrade (from 4 to 16gb) which didn't fix anything. They have now recommended I erase & reinstall everything.

I have done this twice and still have the issue on an Intel based iMAC 27"
First time Yosemite froze at the grey apple logo screen with progress bar at 1/3rd. A Re-install sorted that and things worked great for about 48 hours

Now it will pass that screen, go to a full grey screen with no logo and (a) either freeze there (every now and then) or (b) wait there for near to 5 minutes before presenting the user login screen

At the user login screen the system waits (spinning wheel going full bore) for another 5-10 minutes before producing the login prompt (window where you can type your password after picking the login account)
Password entry completed it is back to spinning wheel and waiting while it apparently processes this. This can take another 10 minutes or more....and usually results in the screen going black with only a mouse pointer  visible. The pointer can be moved around but clicking on it does NOTHING, and the system sits there indefinitely.

I have done the Safe mode stuff, the NVRAM/PRAM clearing stuff, the Disk Utility repair and permissions repair, Recovery and as I stated - have re-installed 2 x aleady.
Very strange behaviour, and as one would have it, this all started the week after my 3 years of warranty and apple-care expired (go figure)

Tried your method (which I did before)

On first attempt it put me to a grey screen and waited for 2-3 minutes before producing the login screen
Login screen I chose user - get spinning wheel, wait for it to finish, enter password, hit enter, get spinning wheel. wait for about 10-15 minutes for it to finish (it appears to because it shells me to a black background screen with a mouse pointer and that is it. I am effectively stuck on that screen. DESKTOP not loaded

Try this. This worked for me.

Boot into Single user mode and ran the following command

mount -uw /

rm -rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/db/BootCache*

rm -rf /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Caches/com.apple*

reboot

I performed the rWhitman33 fix and it has worked like a charm.  There were a lot of file permissions out of sync I guess.  Thanks for the idea!

HI

My short-term solution to this problem (worked for me), is to restart your mac in safe mode (hold shift key after the start-up-sound and release when the apple icon appears). When in safe mode, enter preferences and remove the password on your profil. Next, use automatic sign-on on your profile. Restart pc without safe-mode.

The reason i call it short-term is because i have not yet tried to restart my mac using a password protected user-profile

I Got similar issue after adobe Flash update. I started installing before it was completely downloaded by mistake and after that I am not able to start the system again. I am trying to restore a full backup from time capsule which is ongoing since yesterday.

Yup, reseting the SMC and the PRAM seems to work so far.

I had the same problem. What worked for me is reinstalling OSX, then installing a back up from time machine and then (IMPORTANT) reset all file access rights. This last step solved it for me. I tried reinstalling several times, but the problem still occured after shutting down the system. Since I reset all file access rights it works as it should. Hope this helps

Solved: I have a second hand  2011 15" MBP which has worked perfectly until June 2016. After the last minor upgrade, I got the same problem as decribed above.

I tried all the suggestions found on the web without success. One of the last I read was that it could be a hardware error.

I went to an authorized Apple service center and they told me after a quick test, that the video card was dead. It required a new motherboard. And it was free, even for my 5 years old MBP!

So I left the computer on Friday and picked it up on Tuesday with a brand new motherboard and it works just perfectly, for free. Incredible !