User Missing on Login Screen but still in Users & Groups

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Level 1

8 points

User Missing on Login Screen but still in Users & Groups

MacBook Pro early 2011 with Sierra OS 10.12.6 ran fine with Primary User 1 and Secondary User 2. Most work was done in Mail with all Mail sent and received saved to On My Mac. Login Window to Name and Password allowed login to each User. Then On My Mac disappeared for User 1 in Sidebar and about same time Login Window stopped allowing access to User 1. Filevault is not being used. I created Administrator privileges for both User 1 and User 2 and can back them up by drag and drop to another Hard Drive. Trying Login Window access to User 1 goes blue screen, after a delay starts a Menu Bar and after several minutes comes back to Login Window. Trying Login Screen to List of Users stops cold, apparently because it can't provide a List of Users that includes the missing User 1 so I have to do hard Shut Down with Power button. I can't recall how I got it to provide Login Window to Name and Password again. For days I've been trying to provide access to User 1 and its On My Mac mailboxes where many mailboxes are used to keep track of Mail sent and received. I'm falling behind handling mail since I can't access prior correspondence that is in On My Mac for missing User 1. Can I switch Users without doing new Login? All suggestions would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, iOS 10.2.1

Posted on May 26, 2018 11:16 PM

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Answer 1

MightyMac1 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 27, 2018 5:06 PM in response to Eric Root

The problem is not solved, but the article was helpful and I thank you. The missing User 1 account is missing both in the Login Window and also from the Users & Groups but what appears to be the User 1 name as a "Home Folder" with its 102 GB contents are still on the Macintosh HD used to boot the Early 2011 computer. I booted in the User 2 account which has administrative privileges so I could try to fix the problem following this article.

I tried to add the User 1 name in Users & Groups, but it won't let me and gave me a red text message saying "Name is being used by another user."

The User 1 home folder under Users still existed so I clicked it to select it and went into Get Info. I used that to try to add User 1 as a user to access the User 1 home folder, but it won't let me do so. When I typed the user name it again gave me a red text message saying "Name is being used by another user."

The Permissions under Get Info still had User 1 along with other files with administrative privileges saying User 1 and the others could Read and Write to the User 1 home folder. I deleted the User 1 permissions thinking doing so may then let me name a User 1 account. I repeated the steps, but that didn't help.

Thus User 1 still has 103GB of important data in its folder that I can't access and can't name another user account as User 1 because that Name is being used by another user.

I appreciate the fine article you suggested, but it didn't help with this situation. I just hope I didn't make it worse.

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