User login stuck on beachball

Problem I’ve never had before that I can’t resolve. I log into my User account and get a blank desktop and a spinning cursor. Nothing responds except Launcher slides up and down. No desktop files show. Can’t log out, can’t do anything except hard shut down with power button. I go into a different (fresh User admin account) and it opens fine. I log out of that and into my regular User account. Voilà! it works. But the only way I can get into it now is to log into the other account first, then log out, then into my regular account. So weird.

I upgraded to Mojave a couple weeks ago, but only just started with this problem. The night before had some brownouts, like electricity fading in and out a little bit, but don’t know if it’s related. I reset the NVRAM but no help. Thanks for any help.

Restart in to Safe boot. Hold down the shift key during restart until you see the Apple logo and a thin progress bar below it.

Chances are that it’s stuck in a software update or that there are many gigabytes of data dumped on the desktop.

Once you manage to Safe boot into the effected user. Run all the updates and restart. If you have a lot of data on the desktop move it to other llocations.

Thanks for the reply. Safe boot did not stop spinning cursor. Finder was “unresponsive,” relaunching didn’t work, and no files showed on desktop. Logged into Admin user, logged out, logged into my user folder. Okay, I can see everything now. Moved Gigs of files off desktop, ran all updates. No change. Hmmm. Deleted my user folder. Reinstalled from Time Machine backup. So far, it works again. :smile: :thinking:

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