I recently managed to mess up my Mac mini while resetting PRAM and NVRAM. I did reset them indeed but something got corrupted because the mini would hang at the blue screen with the spinning beach ball re-appearing time and time again. Strangely I could still connect to it with SSH and file sharing worked, too.
I tried lots of things such as resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) and booting from the Snow Leopard install DVD to verify and fix permissions/disk.
I found an interesting post in the Apple forum from someone whoes log file showed the same type of errors:
Login Window Started Security Agent Login Window - Returned from Security Agent AuthorizationRef returned errAuthorizationDenied. Exiting.
The post mentions a “corrupted authorization file” but that didn’t help me much (where is this file?). Googleing for that lead me to a blog entry labeled “LoginWindow crash” which explains things quite detailed. A second hint came from the insanelymac.com forum, thanks.
In the end you need to replace the authorization file at /private/etc/authorization with either
- authorization~previous in the same folder
- or the one from the OS X install disk at /Volumes/osx/private/etc/authorization
Thank you for this info, it helped me solve the same problem!
You absolute beauty!! I’ve been trying to fix this damned thing for the last two and a half hours now. Finally managed to work out it was the loginwindow, then that the authorization could be broken and then I found this post which told me where the thing was! Copied over the authorization file from my MacBook and hey presto! 😀
Thank you!
You’re a life saver!
Thank you!!!!
Many thanks for the tip! I was thinking on reinstalling all the system before I read your blog! 😉
Thanks! Sainthood abounds!
Thanks! This info saved me, too.
Thank you so much! I have searched for solutions everywhere and all of the suggestions to solve the blue screen problem didn’t work for me. Thankfully, I viewed the log file and saw the error you mentioned, googled it and found your site. It solved my problem. I saw another file authorization,(comma) and used that. Now my macbook air is back to normal(a guy from apple service center suggested to replace the logicboard, thankfully i didnt follow)
IT WORKS!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!
I lost 2 hours to resolve that problem before I found this post.
thank you again
I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for this information! It really helped me out a lot. While actually finding an operating system that would both mount my OS X HDD as writeable and also show all files was a huge pain, your information was 100% spot-on, and I cannot thank you enough for the help that you provided. My Snow Leopard installation now boots successfully again.
Cheers buddy!!!