April 14th, 2020 · 1 min read
This may not work if you’re using a new(er) machine with T2 security chip or having FileVault enabled. The one I was dealing with was an old MacBook Pro (Early 2011) running Lion.
Apparently her laptop was set up by someone else & that someone turned on Automatic Login. For 9 yrs she's been using her computer without ever having to enter her admin password. She didn't even remember who helped her set it up in the 1st place. (2/6)
— Anh (@quanganhdo) April 9, 2020
How to reset the password without even knowing the current one? There's a support article for that: https://t.co/NpLlCwN5mH. Unfortunately, she had no Apple ID set up and FileVault turned off. (3/6)
— Anh (@quanganhdo) April 9, 2020
Creating a new admin account using System Preferences wasn't an option either because she couldn't unlock the Users & Groups pane: https://t.co/tELUgvuVZ6 (4/6)
— Anh (@quanganhdo) April 9, 2020
The solution was to boot into Single User Mode and remove AppleSetupDone to force the machine to re-run Setup Assistant of course: https://t.co/Uknrfnhm04. She then created a new Admin account, log in to it and reset the other account's password. (5/6)
— Anh (@quanganhdo) April 9, 2020
She lost access to her old keychain, but all other data was there. Once again, Single User Mode saved the day.
— Anh (@quanganhdo) April 9, 2020
(6/6)