My Mac mini (early 2009) was getting slow, so I decided to do some upgrades. I got 8 GB of ram and a 128 GB SSD from crucial that their wizard verified as being compatible. I downloaded Yosemite from the app store and made a bootable USB drive following Apple's instructions. Then I did a time machine backup to an external drive. Finally I did the RAM and SSD install. I inserted the Yosemite USB drive I made earlier and did a fresh installation. On startup, I migrated files and settings from my time machine backup. I logged in to my primary account and did the software updates from the app store and rebooted. At this point my family started using the computer and is very happy with it. Startup, login, and application loads are very fast. There's no more freezes or beachballs.
However, one of the four user accounts is problematic. It takes several minutes to login and load the dock/ menu bar, versus seconds for all the other accounts. Clicking on anything in the menus/desktop/dock/dialogs results in a beachball for several minutes. No applications or files will open. Occasionally I'll get a "the application … could not be opened" error dialog 10-20 minutes after trying to open something from the dock. How do I fix this account?
Some additional information: this computer does not have filevault encryption enabled, and there are no login items.
Best Answer
Use/hold Command-R during restart
select Terminal and type "resetpassword"
Then select reset password for the account in question
DO NOT RESET the Password.
Instead click on the Reset Home Folder Permissions.