Restoring user account after FileVault problems

My user account has become unusable following a Mac software update in which (I suspect) I stupidly selected not to recover disk space for FileVault when it was rebooting.
I have mounted the sparseimage from another account and used Disk Utility. However, it can not be verified or repaired.
How do I go about either restoring the account or copying the existing files from that account to a new one? And what files do I need to copy under the user's home directory? What is the easiest way of doing this?
Any help much appreciated.

I get the message 'Your FileVault-protected home folder did not open and needs repair'.
On clicking OK to repair it, I get 'Logging into the account failed because an error occurs'.
As in the original post, verifying or repairing the mounted home folder does not work. I need to be able to move files from this account to a new account.

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Restoring user accounts after Leopard installation

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I'm not sure what to search for in these forums.
Prior to installing Leopard, I made a clone of my Tiger system on my external HD. I did an erase&install and used migration assistant to transfer my user account from Tiger and all the apps, documents, settings, etc, back to my computer. I thought I could just write over the new user account that was made when Leopard was installed, but I was prompted to change the name of the old account (as it was the same as my new user account on Leopard). So the old one is now "myname1" and the new one is "myname".
How do I remove the new "myname" account permanently and give full administrator privileges to the "myname1" account that I transferred from my external HD? Furthermore, once this is done, is it possible to rename "myname1" back to "myname"?
I tried doing this in the users panel, but all I could think of doing was removing admin privileges from the new "myname" Leopard account and giving them to the "myname1" account. What's the next step?
Thank you!

Shannon,
We can "restore" backed up users to a new installation very easily. First, you should create any accounts you will be restoring using the exact same usernames and user short names as the old accounts. Then, enable the "root" account and log in as root. Follow the instructions on manual restoration of user data that you will find in this kbase article.
Basically, you have the right idea, but you need to follow the instructions I have given to avoid any problems.
Note: The commands listed in this article (two of them) to run in Terminal when restoring data to a new installation apply to accounts created in 10.2 only. For restoring data to accounts created in 10.3 (Panther) and 10.4 (Tiger), use the following single command instead of the two separate ones listed in the article:
chown -R username:username /Users/username
In the above command, you will replace all instances of "username" with your own short name. So, if your short name is "fred," for example, you will type the following exactly:
chown -R fred:fred /Users/fred
If you have further questions, just ask.
Scott

How to best restore lost User Accounts after server crash?

Our late 2005 G5 froze sometime overnight in the middle of a Time Machine backup. We had to do a hard reboot the next morning.
When OS X Server 10.5.8 came back up, none of our users could log in including our administrator accounts. Unable to log in as root, we used the utility on the installation disc to reset the root password. We were able to log in as root to see that our data and server disks still were intact and navigable. However, we could not see any user accounts defined. We then were able to log in as Server Administrator. Same thing.
We are unfamiliar with restoring anything from Time Machine backups other than user files. Is there a way to restore user accounts from Time Machine and how?
More info: we tried restoring some system files and the library folder but no luck. Not sure how to go about restoring Keychain if that got corrupted...We had about 10 accounts defined before the crash.
Carl

I believe the easiest approach would be:
- Install the same OS on the new servers
- Install OS pre-req software and packages for your EBS instance
- Restore from cold backup (if the crash happened directly after this backup and you haven't lost any data)
OR,
- Restore from hot backup (if the crash happened after your cold backup and you have data that wasn't part of the cold backup)
I assume that no changes to the hostname, domainname, IP Address, port numbers, directory structure, ..etc is taking place in this restore.
Thanks,
Hussein

Unable to log in to user account after installing windows 7 using Bootcamp

Hi everyone,
I need help. I have been at it for days, I have googled every which way but I am not able to fix this. Basically my problem is that I am unable to log in to my user account after I used Bootcamp to install windows 7. I will explain what I did up until I couldn't log in.
I backed up my user account using Time Machine(I was logged in as the user). The account had FileVault activated and I neglected to disable FileVault before back up. I just didn't think to, it did not even occur to me! Then I partitioned Macintosh HD, I was doing this with my step son and he thought we were supposed to partition the hard drive first before running Bootcamp! After that was done, I couldn't run Bootcamp because obviously we had whipped the HD clean! Anyway, I reinstalled the OS X using the internet, after which I run Bootcamp and successfully installed windows 7. Then I went on to restore my account using Time Machine, only when I try to log in I get the error message "you are unable to log in to the user account at this time". I tried every possible solution I could find on here, including creating a new admin account, deleting the old account but saving the user folder and then routing the new account to the old user folder. Still nothing. I have tried logging in as a root user, reset the master password and deleted FileVault files from Library/keychain in the hope I would access the user account, but to no avail. What's more is that I can't even see the sparse bundle or sparse image files that people keep referring too. I can't even find it on the Time Machine back up! I then thought I would cut my losses and try system recovery using Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery (cost me £81) but it did not recover any of my photos, music, videos or documents.
I honestly can't come to terms with the fact that I am unable to login to an account with 3 years worth of pictures and documents. I am having a hard time letting go. Is there anyway possible to crack this?
Thank you in advance.
By the way, I am running Mountain Lion OX 10.8.4 on MacBook mid 2010

I have this exact problem. Installed Bootcamp on a networked iMac running Mountain lion and and can no longer log in to my Mac user account. Would love if any of the pro users on here can shed a bit of light.

My computer keeps going to user account after one minute of idlig. How can I change that?

my computer keeps going back to user account after one minute of idling. The only thing I know I did was to change the time on window themes. Now how do I get the user account page from taking me from my page I am currently reading? Does this after every 60 sec. of no activity.

Hello again loveroflight,
I am still not understanding apparently what your issue is. So I think it would be best if you contact HP Technical Support for repair options. They will be able to log onto your system and actually see what it is you are having and issue with and provide you with a resolution.
I would like to thank you for posting on the HP Forums. Have a great day!
Please click the "Thumbs Up" on the bottom right of this post to say thank you if you appreciate the support I provide!
Also be sure to mark my post as “Accept as Solution" if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others who face the same challenge find the same solution.
Dunidar
I work on behalf of HP
Find out a bit more about me by checking out my profile!
"Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong." ~ Donald Porter

How do i merge my user accounts after migration assistant

Hello,
How do I merge my user accounts after migration assistant from a time machine back up?

I wonder how to plan what account and rights to have where?
I had my old original account on my iMac, and then I "migrated" the data to a user account, in order to have some advantages with that setup. So everything worked approximately ok in this setup.
And yesterday, I tried migrating to a new Mac, and suddenly I get aware of the fact that the rights on these two earlier accounts were important.
And especially, after doing the migration to the new machine twice, until I got the Mail working, I am now totaly bewildered what solution to aim for? How to merge the two migrated admin accounts - keeping the original admin account is also important, since my file system har special rights for that one.
Could anyone give me more ideas about how to proceed? I think I have working Mail on one of the two migrated account (with 100 000 mails or so, it seems so...). The other account is the one I would like to have.
Also I think I want to use a normal user account, not an admin account for my daily use. And I have to see if things still work if I turn off the admin rights...
Thankful for any advice!
/groundliner

I'm having a problem with logging into a FileVault-protected user account after restoring from Time Machine backup.

Hi all,
My computer had been running really slowly for a while, so I decided to erase the whole hard drive and reinstall the operating system, and then I was going to restore the files I cared about from Time Machine. The main account, which had all my documents and photos, was FileVault-protected. The last thing I did before erasing the hard drive was to run one last Time Machine backup. As far as I remember, I always ran Time Machine backups with the FileVaulted user logged in.
I don't remember whether I was using FileVault 1 or 2. I had been using FileVault 1, but I installed Lion as soon as it came out and I thought I had migrated to FileVault 2 at that point.
Once I erased the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, I browsed the Time Machine disk and, within the Users folder, there was no folder for the main user account. When I tried to reinstall everything by restoring from Time Machine backup, I'd get the option for all the user accounts, but when I tried to log in with the main one I'd get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the FileVault user account "User" at this time. Log in failed because an error occurred." Finally, when attempting to restore from the Time Machine backup again, I noticed something strange: After the computer got to about 10% done restoring, it declared itself completed successfully and rebooted.
I've tried a number of tips that came up from questions about similar issues on the Apple support forum, but had no luck. Is there any way to get these files back? Did they ever even get backed up?
Thanks.

Hroodbwai wrote:
I can't find it! not sure what's going on but the only folder shown is the " Shared" folder.
Did you have only the one user account? If there were others, they should also be in the "Users" folder. You probably won't have access to the files inside them, but they should be there.
From what can make out, it looks like it's not backed up any of the files for the filevault account. Can't see user folder when looking through previous backups in Time Machine galaxy view.
Are you doing that from a Finder window set to your internal HD, or your computer name? It should look something like this (with the Finder in List view):
|
|
I'd been logging out and backing up manually on a regular basis.
Scheduled backups should run normally; but they won't back up the File Vault sparse bundle, nor will any run manually.
The only time it's backed-up is when you actually log out.
You should have seen this window on logout:
|
|
followed by this one:
|
|
If you didn't see the second one, or cancelled it, the account wasn't backed-up.

No User accounts after Archive and Install ?

Today I tried to salvage a 20" iMac G5 for a friend. He had done something that screwed up his hard drive. Disk Utility Disk Repair run of the startup partition always failed. Using an external FW disk, I was able to use Disk Utility Repair successfully, but drive would still not boot. Decided Archive and Install was the right way to go, did that and everything seemed OK but I found I could not log in to his account. Thought it was just a lost password, so tried using the OSX Tiger Install DVD to Reset Password. His *Macintosh HD* Startup drive shows only the "root" user available, neither of the two previous user account names appear.
I can think of nothing to do to recover except an Erase & Install (I have his User files saved). Is there an alternative?
I would assume performing another Archive & Install would yield the same result.

I continued work on this issue today. First, I checked and the three User account folders were present in the Users folder along with the one new account created as part of the Mac OSX Tiger A&I. For some reason, not one of these 4 was accessible from the Login screen; it acted exactly if there were no user accounts.
Purchased and installed DiskWarrior 4 on the FW drive and rebuilt the directory of the iMac's internal drive. Ran all other tests available w/ DW. Still no joy on logging in. I should NOT have had to see the Login screen at all if the new user had been created properly.
Punted. Copied everything I thought I would need to the external drive, then did an Erase & Install of OS X Tiger. Applied all updates, no problems logging in. Copied all the original User/username files and folders and restored a few apps.
Finally, after much wasted time, I have all but one App running and all data files, folders, pics, music restored.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 fails because I apparently failed to save a .plist file somewhere and now I learn too late that PE 3.0 will not install on a 10.4.x system. Sigh.

Restoring user accounts from TM?

I need to reinstall Leopard on one of my internal drives. I have hourly TM backups on another internal drive, with the most recent one from a few minutes ago.
I don't want to do a "total restore", because that might restore whatever files have been causing the systemic problems I've been experiencing (all three user accounts have had the problems).
Is there a way I can use TM to simply restore the user accounts to the freshly installed version of OS X, without bringing any other files over?
Thanks.

sw_i_t_t_e_rs,
OK, based on this, a few things do come to mind.
The first harkens back a long way; we don't see this as much as we used to, so it is no longer as obvious as it used to be, but fonts can still be corrupted, and can still cause problems. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover that a bad font, somewhere, is causing these GUI problems.
Based on the fact that all users are experiencing the problem, the most likely place is in the "main" fonts folder. Yep, the Migration Assistant is very likely to have transferred these to the new installation.
Caches can also cause the types of problems you are seeing. Do you know how to find and delete all cache files? Try removing as many as you can, and see where it leads.
The last thing I would look at, in your shoes, is a potential recurring disk error. Since the types of problems you have indicate a system-wide problem, the most obvious candidate would be some system component. That's why you reinstalled, and why anyone would be compelled to do so. Logic would dictate that a reinstallation, especially in conjunction with a format (erasure) of the hard drive, would fix such a problem.
In some cases, logic would be wrong. Let's assume that the problem began with a disk error, and some critical system files were damaged; call them "file A" and "file B." If said disk error was the result of a bad block on the hard drive, a standard format and reinstallation would not necessarily correct the problem. You see, the reinstallation would be most likely to write the same files to the same blocks on the hard drive. File A and file B would be written to the same bad block(s), and the problem would recur.
The answer, then, is to "zero" the drive, thereby "mapping out" any potential bad blocks. I once worked with a machine (an iMac) that had a bad installation. I was told by the owner that, upon running a specific update, the machine "crashed." OK, managed to make a backup of the user data, then I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled OS X with the intention of returning the user data. However, upon running all the updates myself, the machine failed at the exact same place that it had for the owner. Hmmm. My next step was to try again, only "zeroing" the drive this time. The machine still runs happily today.
The trick to getting those bad blocks mapped out is to select the entire drive (not the named volume that appears indented underneath the drive in Disk Utility), and to choose the "Zero All Data" option in the "Security Options..." dialogue sheet. I would only try this as a last resort, after I had ruled out bad fonts, bad cache files, etc.
Who knows, your sleep problems could be related, too.
Scott
EDIT: I'm going to add one more thing to my "before you format again" list... It wouldn't hurt to run the commands I have already given to correct any ownership problems. As I mentioned, caching could be involved in the types of problems you are seeing (Leopard's Finder makes heavy use of caching). The types of potential ownership problems that I am targeting with those commands (specifically, group ownership) could lead to trouble writing cache files properly. Run those commands before you do anything else.

Restoring user accounts from system install backup directory

Hi,
I had some kind of disk problem that forced me to reload tiger. When tiger intalled it backed up all of the user directries. After the new install booted up I can not figure out how to restore all of my user accounts from this backup directory. Maybe I am making it too hard (ex PC user). The migtration utility only wants to restore off a Mac or different volume. Any suggestions?
Thanks
imac g4 800 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

If you did an Archive & Install, then you should have selected the saving user and network settings. Otherwise, everything was put into the Previous System folder. IIRC, you need to recreate the users, using the exact same username and password combinations. Then, log into each account, open the corresponding folder within the Previous System/Users/ directory and transfer everything from the old account to current account.

New user account fixes sleep problem... what next?

I have a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHZ that will no longer sleep automatically. I've tried a number of fixes, but the only thing that has restored normal sleep behavior is creating a new user account. Since the problem seems isolated to my current user account, what can I do to fix my user account? I'd prefer not to rebuild this account or reinstall Snow Leopard. Any thoughts are appreciated.
I've tried:
Quitting everything
Resetting PRAM
Resetting the SMC
Turning off bluetooth
Re-pairing my bluetooth keyboard and mouse
Turning off airport
Unplugging everything, including power
Changing energy saver preferences
Restoring energy saver preferences
Deleting unused login items (only iTunesHelper, Things Helper, and AdobeResourceSynchronizer remain)
Looking in Activity Monitor for suspicious processes
Nothing above worked or revealed any clues. I haven't installed any new software recently. I did use a Verizon USB760 3G modem for the first and only time on a recent trip, but did not install software to accompany it. I can find no traces of the device on my system since returning home but am suspicious.
Thanks for any help. Cheers!

Yes. You got it. My computer will sleep when I close the lid or click on  > Sleep, but not when I leave it idle for the amount of time set in the Energy Saver preference pane.
I tried deleting com.apple.systempreferences.plist from the folder ~/Library/Preferences and restarting but the computer still won't sleep. Other ideas anyone?

Lost user account after upgrading to Mavericks

Hi there,
I've just upgraded from ML 10.8.5 to Mavericks 10.9 using the Mavericks install app downloaded in another computer and after restarting, I got the setup screen.
I restarted the computer in single user mode and notice that the user accounts are still in there so I created the .AppleSetupDone file manually. After restarting, I couldn't login using any of the accounts.
I restarted on the Recovery partition and tried to reset the users passwords, but the only user available was the root user. I created a password for the root so I can at least login on the system.
After loging in as root, I can't find my users in System Preferences and in their home folders, the only folder is the Library folder, all the other folders were deleted.
I work in a school and want to deploy Mavericks to all computers soon, but I don't want that teachers or students have the same problem.
Does anybody have a solution for it?
Thanks,
Luis

I got the setup screen.
That shouldn't have happened. Either the directory database was corrupt to begin with, or something else went wrong with the installation. It's not a normal occurrence.

Install User from sparseimage - Filevault problem

Hi
I'm using a PowerBook and turn FileVault on again recently. After leaving it to do it's thing this morning I have logged in to find my user account logs me into what seems like a fresh user account. My desktop only has my hard drive icon, the dock has the default icons and not my usual set. I launched MS Entourage which installed it's base fonts, and my calendars/email etc were empty.
Inside the Users folder I can see my user name, as well as the other accounts user names, also a new user with the same user name as me but with a '1' after, for example:
username
username 1
john
paul
username 1 only has a library folder, whilst username has the usual suspects as well as username.sparseimage
If I check user accounts my username says filevault is NOT on.
I have checked an other admin account on my laptop and all seems OK. It seems as if FileVault has possibly encrypted my account to a sparseimage which I can no longer login to. The sparseimage seems to have all my files so I wish to reinstall that user if possible.
Altyhough I've cloned a whole hard drive and reinstalled that previously I'm not sure how to reinstall a single user onto an existing operating system from a sparseimage so can any body please help?
Cheers.

Hi Petra,
Thanks so much for that - it worked! That has saved me at least 1 day of reinstalling and configuration. I think it's time to clone my entire HD again!

Attempting to restore User account (saved as folder, not disc image)

I was using this article to restore it, though I have Snow Leopard and not Lion. I'm having trouble at "Rename the home directory by removing (Deleted) so that the folder name becomes the account name of the deleted user." I can't rename the file. I tried clicking twice as I normally do, I tried using Get Info to change it that way, but even after unlocking it I couldn't edit the name.
Am I doing something wrong that I'm overlooking? Is the article I'm using too outdated? Is there another way I can restore the User account; most How To's seem to be for if it was saved as a disc image, which I didn't do.

Never mind, I've solved it on my own. I needed to log in as root.

Can't log into User Account after disrupting external hard drive

I keep my account (Admin) on an external hard drive due to the large volume of data. I mistakenly pulled out the USB cable to the drive while trying to resolve another issue. Subsequently, it appeared a lot of my data was missing. I restarted the computer and couldn't log into my user account. It seems pulling the USB cable to the external drive corrupted something. I verified both disks (internal & external) and all was OK. I ran Disk Permissions and tried to repair. The resultant information is attached at the bottom of this message.
I can access my data on the hard drive from my laptop over the network. I just can't get into my user account directly. Any ideas on how I can address this issue?
Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Reso urces/Locum" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner " has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconf ig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writecon fig" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/authopen" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent" has been modified and will not be repaired.
User differs on "System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Libraries/classlist" , should be 0, user is 95.
Permissions differ on "Library/Frameworks/HPPml.framework", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Frameworks/HPServicesInterface.framework", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/hp/Frameworks/Matterhorn.framework/Versions/DI_MH.A.05.01.001 /Resources/Info.plist", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/hp/Frameworks/ResourceManager.framework/Versions/DI_RM.A.04.0 7.000/Resources/Info.plist", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x .

There may have been another solution to this problem but I went the route of creating another user name and migrated the data over to that name. Thank you!

Restoring user account after FileVault problems

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