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Model A1224 / Mid 2007 and Early 2008 / 2, 2.4, or 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

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Why can't I log in after installing new hard drive?

I installed a new hard drive on my iMac. The old hard drive was running OS X 10.7 Lion that was downloaded from the app store. I don't have an install disk for Lion but have one for Snow Leopard so I installed Snow Leopard first then I was going to go in and Install Lion from the app store. I also was keeping time machine up to date with and external hard drive when using my old hard drive.

After installing the new hard drive I went in and followed the instructions on iFixit on installing Snow Leopard (Steps 1-18) including all the disk utility items. From there I restored the new hard drive from my time machine hard drive. Everything went smoothly up to this point. Now that everything was restored from time machine I go into log into my user account and won't allow me to log on. I also tried other user accounts that I had installed and I get the same thing not allowing me to log in.

I suspect the reason for this is that the time machine back-up was from Lion and right now on my new hard drive I only have Snow Leopard thus creating the conflict. Is that correct? If so do I need to go in and create a Lion Recovery Disk from my old hard drive and install Lion from the recovery disk onto the new hard drive?

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I was able to resolve the issue by first installing Snow Leopard and then creating a new user account so that I could get in and download Lion from the app store. Once Lion was installed I restored all my existing user accounts from time machine. System works like a champ now with the new hard drive.

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try resetting your password with the install disk using the utils from pulldown menu it might work ? 8-)

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Two of my user accounts did not have a password associated with them and I wasn't able to log into those user accounts either. Do you think that the passwords got messed up somehow when restoring the new hard drive from time machine? Should I be able to log in using the Snow Leopard OS even though the Time Machine was backed up using the Lion OS?

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Jeff Kvalheim will be eternally grateful.
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