I'd also recommend booting off your install CD and running Repair Permissions from the Disk Utility. That should cure a lot of your ills. Cheers, Coj revDAVE <coolcat at hostalive.com> update: I managed to log in as root. - I got info on the bad partitions and changed the group access to read and write - this allowed me access under my main user name. - However - in the details area - I am not allowed to change either the owner tab or the group tab - and it says an unexpected error occurred: 60002 - If I attempt to move either tab - the owner still says "unknown" - and then I'm not able to change it with the error listed above. - is there any way to fix this - and reset the owner and group? Thanks in advance for your help - RevDave