G5 OS X 10.4 user account corruption

[Charles Dyer]

On 14 Jan 2008, at 10:04:05, Fabian Peters wrote:

>
> Am 14.01.2008 um 14:51 schrieb Charles Dyer:
>
>> On 14 Jan 2008, at 06:40:16, Fabian Peters wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm once more confronted with a strange condition: On startup, the  
>>> login panel is shown as normal, the user logs in and the login- 
>>> window disappears. The user-defined desktop-image appears, but  
>>> neither the menu bar nor the dock nor any icons on the desktop  
>>> show up.
>>>
>>> 2 different G5 machines have had this problem so far. For the  
>>> first time it occurred after a power failure but now it keeps  
>>> coming back, even after reinstalling the system from scratch.
>>
>> That sounds awfully like a major directory problem. Did you run  
>> Disk Warrior or some such, or did you reformat? Either should have  
>> ddressed the directory problem.
>
> Yes, the systems were reinstalled on clean filesystems, although  
> DiskWarrior did not find any problems with the previous FS.  
> Afterwards the old user directory contents were copied over from an  
> external drive.

Okay... now _that_ sounds like a failing hard drive. Does SMART say  
anything? (Note: if SMART says there's a problem, then there's a  
problem, replace the drive immediately. If SMART _doesn't_ say there's  
a problem, there could still be a problem. SMART's not too smart.) In  
the past I've seen a lot of Very Strange Things™ happen when there's a  
failing drive on a system.

Other than that, the only thing I can think of off-hand is your  
suggestion that it might be a NetInfo problem. Which, unfortunately,  
doesn't bring us any closer to a fix.