Monday, July 26, 2010

How to reset OSX admin account

Some settings changed on my machine which stopped me from being able to log in. The only way I was able to get around this was to do the following:
  1. Reboot
  2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
  3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
    • mount -uw /
    • mv /var/db/.AppleSetupDone /var/db/.AppleSetupDone.old
    • shutdown -h now
  4. Start machine again and setup new admin account
  5. Fix the problem (in my case network users had been disabled)
  6. Log out
  7. Log in as your usual user to test all has been fixed
  8. If all good restart the machine and repeat steps 2 - 3 reversing the following
    • mv /var/db/.AppleSetupDone.old /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
  9. Start the machine and log into you usual user/admin account
  10. Delete the newly created admin account from the System preferences -> Accounts

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