Stuck on log-in, help!

[orangefoodie]

Let's just say, one thing led to another and I ended up doing a whole wipe, zero, OS X reinstall of my 17" PB. (with a backup, which failed me --- stupid ipod dropping in the middle of the xtar session!)

But luckily, I had a copy of my home directory in my ipod under trashes, so I was able to salvage that. It ran happily, and the first thing I did was run software update to put it to 10.2.6. I rebooted, and logged in --- but now I'm apparently stuck in the log-in process. The aqua-bar moves and moves, but nothing happens. What should I do? I'm thinking of getting either Jag or Panther on my iPod again, and booting from there to just rescue the /Documents folder of my home directory... any tips?

 

[orangefoodie]

... Thank goodness I'd made another test account with admin privvies to test if the tarballed archives were really broken... Apparently I can log under that one. WTF?

<switcher's still-getting used to mac rant>I'll never understand the Mac as long as I live... At least PC's are relatively free of voodoo! (of course, only when you format and reinstall every 2 months) </switcher's still-getting used to mac rant>

EDIT: Now I'm re-installing OS X yet again... wish me luck.