Automatic network login gone bad

[briareos]

So, I have a Ti 500 I use as a dedicated MP3 player hooked up to my living room stereo. Unhappy with the piddling 20 GB hard drive, I decided to drag two MP3 folders from my QS Dual 1 Ghz to iTunes on the Ti via Airport. Now I had 55 GBs of MP3s to cycle through, and it worked beautifully until I restarted the Ti.

Now when the Ti reboots three network login panels appear. None of them will accept keyboard or mouse input. The QS's HD icon mounts on the desktop twice. the Dock is unusable. The Finder is severely laggy.

No problem, I thought. Booted from the 9.2 CD intending to throw away the iTunes library, but the internal HD wouldn't mount, and Disk First Aid reports that while it sees the drive, it is unable to mount it.

Bugger. Any ideas on what I can do now besides an archive and install?

Thanks, Bri

[alcimedes]

does your Ti show up if you connect it via firewire (target disk mode) to your desktop?

[briareos]

Weird.

I tried mounting the Ti as a Firewire drive (which I'd never done before) and it worked fine. I tossed all the iTunes and for good measure all the networking prefs I could find. Rebooted. Even more login panels appeared, like ten or twelve. Tried again. Rebooted. More login panels than I could count appeared. In excess of !thirty! Mounted as a FW drive again, erased drive, used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my Dual 1Ghz drive to the Ti (less 55 Gbs MP3s). Rebooted.

It worked! I think this is absolutely amazing. What a fantastic combination of hard- and soft- ware. My Dell laptop sure won't mount on my Micron desktop, and as for cloning from one to the other...guaranteed dead PC.

Thanks for your help,
Bri