Recently I was using my Macbook and was having some issues with a program that was running. I had a lot of processes running(imovie, motion, gimp). I saved and closed all the projects running and did a restart on the system. Boot up looked normal. Once i chose my user account and entered the password, everything still looked normal but the OS would not load. The loading bar that normally takes a few seconds to a minute slowly loaded for about 30-40 minutes and then rebooted. Every time I attempt to login with that user account(the admin and only user account on the macbook) the same thing happens. I was able to boot in recovery mode and go to disk utility. The HDD appears completely full. I am unable to test it or unlock it. An attempt to unlock the HDD to test it, responds the similar the login attempt, it takes forever and does not do anything. I have removed the HDD and placed it in an external enclosure to verify it is operational and it test good but I am still unable to recover any info from the HDD. I also tried using a firewire to firewire cable from my macbook to an imac to access the HDD as an external storage device booting the macbook into storage mode. No luck their either. I read a few post in the forum here and found a link detailing how to reset an admin password, one option detailing creating a new user account through Terminal then accessing the user accounts with that login and resetting the initial account. Link attached below. Would this be the next course of action? Is there something I am overlooking? Any suggestions of another plan of attack? I unfortunately do not have a backup. Once i can recover data or get back into the user account I can reinstall the OS through disk manager if needed but I an attempting to recover the data or preferably the user account.
Link http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/10/forgot-mac-password-how-to-reset-mac-password/