[SunHELP] can't login - circular behavior

[Arthur Wouk]

i have run my home sparcs as root for years. i know this is bad, but i
am not connected to the internet and i can live with my random
blunders. however, i decided to get out of this bad habit by
establishing a separate non-su identity fpr myself. i used admintool.
then i fixed up my local environment to match my previous one as su.
i am using cde.

i did that yesterday, and this morning i find that no matter what i do
when i login under this identity, i a quickly resent to the login
page. if i try the failsafe login option, i get an openwindows
environment. i can't get to cde.

any clues?