Password box on login screen missing styling

[sulliops]

Hi everyone,

So I've got a Mac installation (swapped between machines) running Catalina 10.15.7, and the login screen is missing styling on the password input box. It still works, but it's super trippy to use compared to my perfectly functional MacBook. Here's what it looks like:

I have already backed up the machine to Time Machine, reinstalled, and restored from backup at least 3 times to try and fix this, so please don't suggest it. I've tried installing over the disk from a Catalina USB twice to no avail. The only thing that "fixes" this issue is completely reinstalling Catalina from a blank disk, which I'm not willing to do since the data on this installation is semi-important and cannot easily be replaced without a Time Machine restore.

Can anyone suggest a way to fix just this one area of the lock screen?

 

[ilandmac]

Hi everyone,

So I've got a Mac installation (swapped between machines) running Catalina 10.15.7, and the login screen is missing styling on the password input box. It still works, but it's super trippy to use compared to my perfectly functional MacBook. Here's what it looks like:

I have already backed up the machine to Time Machine, reinstalled, and restored from backup at least 3 times to try and fix this, so please don't suggest it. I've tried installing over the disk from a Catalina USB twice to no avail. The only thing that "fixes" this issue is completely reinstalling Catalina from a blank disk, which I'm not willing to do since the data on this installation is semi-important and cannot easily be replaced without a Time Machine restore.

Can anyone suggest a way to fix just this one area of the lock screen?

 

[ilandmac]

How about erasing this disk, doing a clean install & then importing your files ?

 

[sulliops]

How about erasing this disk, doing a clean install & then importing your files ?

I'd really like to avoid a complete reinstall simply because of how long it would take to transfer everything over (more than a few install-specific application licenses that would need to be de-registered and moved), but I suppose it is what it is.

I've sort of tracked down what I think might be the problem to "loginwindow.app" in CoreServices, but it's an installer-built app that seems to be specific to each installation so I can't easily replace it to test if that's actually the issue. Oh well, worth a shot anyway.