Message: Unable to login to account (name) at this time.

Question

I have a Power Mac G4 Dual 500 MHZ tower with 600 MB of ram. The system, disks and permissions all check out perfectly. No hardware errors or disk errors. When I try to log into my account I get the message:"Unable to login to account (name) at this time". If I try 3 times with what I am certain is my password, I get another message that allows me to type in the master password and reset the account password.
I have tried "resetting" the password to the old password and new passwords, I have booted from the system disk and reset the account password and I have logged into another admin account and reset the password for the account. NOTHING.
FileVault is ON. I'm quite certain this has something to do with the problem, because of the message about the "Master Password and Turning FileVault off. I've scoured these discussion pages and elsewhere for an answer, but I can't seem to find any articles with the correct suggestions.
Does anybody out there have any helpful suggestions for this situation? I literally have about 5 years of addresses, music, photos, and other important documents in there that I really really need. Some of them are backed up, but what a nightmare. Thanks anybody for any help.
Ken
PowerMac G4 Dual 500   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

Answer 1

Filevault provides increased security, but unfortunately this sometimes comes at the expense of data integrity. Apple needs to emphasize this more, but it is essential that users of "Filevault" maintain up to date backups. This is true for everyone of course, but it is especially important for "Filevault" users.
The contents of a "Filevault" protected account are wrapped up and stored as a single encrypted file, the username.sparseimage file. The fact that everything is in one file makes all of the data vulnerable to a single disk error. The error message you describe could indicate that that file has become misplaced (relatively easy to fix) or that that file has become corrupt (possibly impossible to fix in which case the data is lost). It will also appear if the login password doesn't match the ".sparseimage" password.
To at least try to distinguish between these possiblities, try logging in to the other "admin" account, and begin by changing the password of the affected account back to what it was originally. Then try opening "/Applications" > "Utilities" > "Terminal.app" and entering these commands (in all lines, where it says 'username', substitute the affected user's short name, and enter the affected user's password when prompted):<pre>su -l username
ls -ald /Users/{\.,}username
find /Users -name username.sparseimage -print -exec hdiutil attach {} \; 2>&1 |grep -v ^find</pre>The output and results of the above commands might provide an indication of whether or not the problem is fixable...