Login Screen Spinning After Password

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Level 1

15 points

Login Screen Spinning After Password

I'm not quite sure how this had happened, but I had logged into my user account yesterday and my system had froze I did a force quit on all applications + relaunch Finder and had to do a force reboot. Now anytime I enter my password, I'm stuck on a continuous spinning wheel and cannot login.

Steps I've Taken:

-NVRAM & SMC resets with all external components/drives unplugged

-Boot in safe mode

-Full reinstall of MacOS High Sierra

-Run first aid in both recovery mode + target disk mode

Note this is an older mac I have been using solely Windows 8.1 in Boot Camp for the last two or so weeks. I don't see how this would corrupt the drive from a separate partition. I do know that High Sierra has had some major issues as far as bugs; perhaps more so with HDDs. I do not recall setting up root user login or Guest account. Worst case scenario I would have to reformat the drive, which would be dreadful as I have already went through this process a few months back. Any advice would be appreciated

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4), Mid-2011 21.5"

Posted on Jun 19, 2018 10:56 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jun 19, 2018 4:46 PM in response to Mik3NC

After you enter your password, the system sets up your account. Something has gone wrong with setting up your run time environment.

I understand you have a dual boot system with Windows and macOS.

I suggest you run Windows in a virtual machine such as Oracles free Virtual box ... if you can. Some games will not play.

I suggest you try to setup a new macOS account.

----------------------------

Get the Mac to set up an additional administrative account. You can then change the password on your old account. This will work all all releases of Mac OS X so far.

You need to get into single use mode for steps one and two that are listed below. Start with your computer power off. Hold down command-s. Power on your computer. Continue holding down command-s until you see some text on the screen.

This page will tell you how to get into single user mode.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492

Type in the following:

The first two commands will depend on your release of Mac OS X. Look at what is typed out in the console to determine the exact format.

# Type the follow two instructions to access the startup disk in read/write. Press return after each command.

# in case of partial success repeat this command until errors go away.

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

cd /var/db

pwd

#List all files. The l is a lower case L.

ls -a

#The move command acts as a rename command in this format.

mv -i .applesetupdone .applesetupdone.old

# reboot your mac

shutdown -r now

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Answer 2

Mik3NC Author

Level 1

15 points

Jun 19, 2018 5:04 PM in response to rccharles

Thanks Charles, those steps worked perfectly. I was able to create a new account & delete the corrupt one. Definitely will be saving this for future use. I actually have used virtual machines as a remedy in the past, but for the time being I've been using Windows boot on this particular machine for a specific game.

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Login Screen Spinning After Password

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