[X4U] Login troubleshooting

[Samantha Cornell]

I have been presented with a Mac problem that I cannot nail down.

A classmate (I've recently gone back to school) asked me to 
troubleshoot his girlfriend's iBook.  She is unable to login.  When the 
iBook boots (running 10.2.8) the login window comes up, but there are 
no accounts listed.

When she enters her username and password, and clicks the button, it 
"looks like it is logging in" for a moment or two, then reverts right 
back to the login window.  It does not jiggle back and forth like it 
does when you input a bad username or password.

She claims that the problem start gradually (getting info is like 
pulling teeth - very frustrating), and seems to have first occurred 
when the internet connection in her building went down overnight...and 
she awoke to find a "black screen with a whole bunch of words on 
it...one of them might have been ethernet."

Don't you love these folks?

I suggested re-installing the OS (frankly, I'm not sure you can do that 
without a valid username, can you?), but they are resistant...claiming 
that it is a pain to upgrade it.

I did boot it from the install disk...and tried to do a password reset 
from disk utility.  No accounts showed up on the harddrive.

Is it possible to delete the one and only account under 10.2.8?  If so, 
would it behave like this?

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Samantha