User Account corrupted by Snow Leopard install?

Question

I installed Snow Leopard on my 24-inch iMac last evening from a Family Pack DVD.
Within three minutes of starting the install, my computer locked up. Waited about an hour to make sure it was really crashed vs. working slow. Finally admitted defeat and restarted the computer. At that time, the screen told me it found an install in progress -- did I want to recover it? My setting etc. would not be affected. I said yes.
The install completed seemingly like a dream.
However, the computer now takes an average of three minutes to complete any task. And by "complete any task" I mean even getting a pulldown menu to appear. It's as if the computer freezes up for three minutes, then unfreezes for five seconds, then freezes again.
What I have tried: I saw a tip somewhere that I should determine whether the whole system/computer is affected or only a specific user account. My computer has only one user account -- mine -- with all the admin privileges, etc. I was able to log on as a guest and everything seems to work beautifully and quickly. Of course, I can't access any of my files or settings from the guest account.
So, it APPEARS that my user account is corrupted somehow. It's hard to imagine trying to work on that from inside the account itself, since it operates in extreme slow motion and is de facto frozen.
What should I do? Do I create a new user account that is admin and delete the old? How do I access my files,settings, etc.?
I don't THINK I need to uninstall Snow Leopard or reinstall it because the guest account seems completely fine.
One other bit of info that may help a knowledgeable person puzzle through this with me: During the Snow Leopard installation, it gave me some pop-up questions concerning duplicate files -- maybe 30 or so -- that were all photos inside iPhoto. (I knew I had a couple dozen photos that I had inadvertently put on the computer twice, but they have resided there for a long time without creating problems. It asked me if I wanted to keep the duplicates or replace them with the originals, and I said "replace" -- it asked me that for each photo. Once the install was finished, there was a stack of photo icons on my desktop screen, piled on top of each other like a deck of cards -- they are the duplicate photos. I don't know if that has anything to do with the problem or not. Again, it's pretty much impossible to work inside that user account at this point so I'm not sure that's relevant.
Anyway, I am not a technical person and would sure appreciate advice.
By the way, because of these problems, I have not tried to install my family pack upgrade on my other iMac -- it is running "old" Leopard and I think I'll definitely leave it as is. Would you folks agree that's wise at this stage?
Thanks again.

Answer 1

hpaton wrote:
R C-R, thanks, I did start up in safe mode and went back into my old user account, the one that is giving me all the trouble. It was very slightly faster. I was able to start up a couple programs and when inside those programs the computer seemed to run pretty fast. However, anything on the desktop or the dock still operates in the frozen-for-three-minutes-OK-for-five-seconds-frozen-for-three-minutes pattern.
In any case, HOLY COW I THINK I FOUND A PROBLEM. Remember that stack of photo icons I told you got placed on my desktop after Snow Leopard installation? I thought it was perhaps 30 photos ... wrong! It is a card stack of all 2,900 photos I have on my computer. (I was able to see this by going into the hard drive icon then drilling down on the desktop, and there was just an endless ocean of photo files on display there.) I presume this is what is crippling my desktop/finder function?
yes, definitely. as I said, having a lot of pics on the desktop will make finder keel over because it has to render all of them. you should try moving them to a separate folder.
log into your account, start terminal and run the following command 9copy and paste please)
mkdir ~/pics; mv ~/desktop/* ~/pics
wait for it to finish. it will move everything from your desktop folder to the folder pics at the top level of your home directory. nothing will be deleted by this so if something is really missing from iphoto you should be able to recover it later.
Presuming this is THE problem, what do I do? I can't tell whether I should try to delete all of those photos off of the desktop or do something else. I WAS able to open iPhoto and it looked like all my photos were still in there, BUT if I double click on any of them to enlarge them or try to edit them, I can't. That's all I know at this point -- don't know if that represents the entire problem, but there is no doubt I have a major issue around iPhoto and my photo files. How do I resolve that without losing my pics?
Message was edited by: V.K.