MacBook Pro won't boot up-stuck after logon screen

[AubreyL]

I have a 2 month old MacBook Pro. It has worked fine but last night I left it on with a lot of applications open. This morning all the apps were locked up and I was just getting the beachball. I was unable to quit any of them or even get to the point of restarting the computer. Once I did I was unable to boot. I get to the logon screen where I enter my password. I get all the way to the screen where I have my background but all I have is the upper right part of the screen (around a square inch) where you see the blue magnifying glass that you use for Spotlight. I get nothing else, no dock, pull down menus, etc. I have gone as far as putting the OS Tiger Boot Disk in and using the Option key to start from CD but then during the boot I get that black screen where it says I need to restart my computer and to hold down the power button.
Any ideas of what I can do?

 

[mad jew]

Do you have any third party hardware attached? Do you have any third party RAM installed?

 

[hotboiled]

i had exactly the same thing !!!

it was a network drive connection and a g5 share that was connected! (at work)

2 solutions that worked for me


reconect to the network

or

login in as a different user
put fast users switching on and switch