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I turned on my MacBook Pro, typed my user password, but it restarts instead of logging in. Now I'm stuck with the guest user and don't have a clue about what to do to access my user with all the files and everything I had saved. Someone please help me!

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By coincidence I am writing a blog post about this. I am assuming that you know the password, but the machine doesn't log into your account properly.

The basics:

  1. We assume your user folder and its contents are OK.
  2. We will delete the USER (System Preferences/Users & Groups) but leave the user FOLDER untouched. When you are asked what to do with the Home folder you say "Don't Change the Home Folder." This leaves all of your stuff in place, in the Users folder.
  3. Now you create a "new" user with the EXACT same name as the old one. There are three things to get right: the "Full Name," the "Account Name," and the Password. The full name is probably your own name. The account name is usually something shorter, no spaces. You know the password.

When you create a new user with the same full name, account name, and password as the old one, the system will ask you whether you want to use the existing folder or not. You DO.

After that, you should be able to log in normally. Let me know.

You may have to create a temporary user (with admin privileges) to give yourself a place to work from. You could make a user called "admin" with the password "admin" and then log into that, and from there "delete" (temporarily) your user. Just remember: leave the Home folder unchanged. Very, very important.

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