Migration Assistant creates a group instead of the desired account

Users who have used Migration Assistant after either upgrading their hard drives or purchasing new computers may run into a problem in which transfered accounts appear as groups and users are not able to log in.

As described by Apple Discussions poster Grashuepfer:

"I just installed a new hard drive in my G4 Laptop and put the old hard drive into a USB enclosure, installed Leopard, and after making sure the computer would boot properly I used migration assistant to move my old account from the USB drive. Now all my applications are there, but the account name I moved does not show up in the login screen. When I go to System Preferences > Accounts the account shows up in a section called 'Groups'."

It seems this problem occurs when users run Migration Assistant after setting up user accounts and testing the new installation, though users have found that Migration Assistant works properly when run on the initial system bootup.

Fixes

Run Migration Assistant in Safe Mode Try booting the computer into Safe Mode by holding shift at startup, and then run the Migration Assistant utility to transfer previous account information from the old hard drive, depending on how it is connected (locally connected drives should mount just fine). Hopefully safe mode will prevent adverse interference in the migration process.

Run Migration Assistant right away In order to bypass the problem of the account appearing as a group, reinstall the operating system onto the new drive (or use the system restore disks that came with the new computer) to get the drive back to it's original state. Then upon booting, after the Leopard welcome screen, use Migration Assistant immediately to transfer old accounts and data to the new installation.

Resources