Cannot use OSX. Loop when logging in on Macbook.

This is the most frustrating problem.

I was running leopard and plugged in my time machine drive. This KILLED the finder and sent the finder careening into a loop of closing/opening. Relaunching did nothing.

So i turned off the drive and hard booted (restart wouldn't work).

Now when leopard boots up the dock comes up (not the menu bar at all) and nothing works and every 10 seconds the screen goes blue, then the dock comes back up.

I've repaired user permissions tried to boot while holding shift and nothing has helped. Absolutely disgusted with this. I've never had such a ridiculous problem in windows.

Please help guys.

 

Ouch. I would boot from the Install DVD and see about repairing your OSX. Worse comes to worse maybe a reinstall.

Yep, OS X is definitely not safe from bugs like this.

 

Repairing what? Is there an option to just repair the install of OSX?

Yea, I was just saying that I can't believe there isn't a simple safe mode. I've never been thrown in a loop in an OS

 

Holding the Shift key during startup is Safe Mode. It sounds like you've already tried that.

If you boot from your Install DVD (hold Option), open Disk Utility from the Menu Bar (you may need to select the language first) and you can repair the Disk.

Have you tried to use Time Machine to Restore the system? Since you cannot boot into OS X startup from the Install DVD.

 

I just talked to applecare. They were clueless. Bunch of idiots. I wound up archiving and installing.... now my frigging password is rejected.

 

Assuming that you have a Time Machine backup, you can still restore your system as I described above.

Also you can Reset the Password. Boot from the Install DVD, choose your language, click the arrow, choose Utilities from the Menu Bar and click Reset Password.

 

I just reset the password, hopefully it will work now.

I'll try and backup with time machine but i'm honestly scared of using it again.

External drive is what caused all this from what i can tell.