[X4U] Some users log in to beachball, no desktop

[Peter Krug]

Maybe someone can help me here - I'm pulling my hair out.  After the  
holiday break, a couple of students found that they could no longer  
access their accounts on a 733 MHz G4 Tower running Mac OS X 10.3.9.   
One of the students' accounts is an Admin, the other is Standard.  My  
admin account works fine and other students' Standard accounts work  
fine.  Basically, at login, the Finder does not load - just the  
beachball of death.  I can launch Programs from the dock (but of  
course Console or Terminal are not in their docks, so I can't see  
what's going on).

I have repaired permissions.  I have booted into OS9 on that machine  
and removed all of the Admin student's preference files from Home/ 
Library/Preferences but there is no change.  I have removed all of  
their login items.

I may have done a security update over the break, but no other  
changes to this machine have been made (I was the only in-town admin  
over the break).  Any ideas?  What have I missed?  Could their  
accounts have been "corrupted"? It really doesn't make sense to me.   
Also, I tried created a new user and that works fine.  So yes, I  
could just drag files from the "dead" user to a new account, <cough  
permissions issues <cough> but I'd like to know what's going on.

Thanks for any insight,

Peter

A little computer haiku:
I can't remember
the last time I restarted
I love OS X

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