Mac Help Needed (Not PSE Related)

[JulieM]

Evidently, something has become corrupted on my user account on my Mac. Initially, the problem started with a kind of laggy mouse and a spinning beach ball that would resolve itself in a short time. When I attempt to use it now, I get the endless spinning beach ball and have to resort to powering off the computer. I managed to do a permissions repair and then used the Apple Hardware Test thingy before it went totally wonky. The Apple Hardware Test showed no problems, even using the extended test.

I have tried two other user accounts and they seem to be working fine so I'm assuming something has gone haywire on mine. Does anyone have any ideas to diagnose/fix this? Mind you, I can't seem to do anything with my user account so am not even sure how I'd start to chuck preference files.

Help, please! I'm lost without my Mac.

iMac running OS 10.7.3

[Barbara Brundage]

Can you get into your account at all?

[JulieM]

Originally Posted by Barbara Brundage

Can you get into your account at all?

Hi Barbara,

I can log into it but as soon as I click on any icons in the dock, I get the spinning beachball.

[Barbara Brundage]

Go to your applications folder and launch activity monitor. Can you see something eating up a huge amount of your ram? I'd also repair permissions if you can. If not, let me know.

[JulieM]

Originally Posted by Barbara Brundage

Go to your applications folder and launch activity monitor. Can you see something eating up a huge amount of your ram? I'd also repair permissions if you can. If not, let me know.

Hi Barbara,

Okay, I logged into my user account and then tried to open Finder to launch the Applications folder. Spinning beachball again. Powered off and then logged in again; this time was able to access Activity Monitor and saw nothing that seemed to be using excess CPU. I was able to continue using the user account for a while and then it froze again, this time while deleting items from the Trash.

I did manage to repair permissions both earlier today after the problem started and again after you suggested it. Any other ideas?

edit: I seem to be able to use my user account in Safe Mode which sounds like it may be a clue.

[Zeria]

Have you added any new fonts?