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Creating Additional Accounts Not Working??

paulcons

paulcons

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 3, 2017
289
168
New York City
For a host of reasons, I am wanting to set up a second Admin account on my M4 Mini. Never thought there's be any issue, but I DO seem to have them. My first try was a disaster (this shouldn't be rocket science). I DID decide not to sign in to my Apple account but the issue was that the configure dialog (cmd-J) kept popping up every time I tried to click on anything. Deleted that and tried again. This time, when I clicked on any Menu Bar item, the drop down would appear for about 2 nanoseconds then disappear.

Anyone have any clue what is going on here? Is it as simple as I MUST sign in to my Apple account?
 
"pretty much" means it's possible but unlikely I made some mistake, seeing as how I did the process of creating the second account twice now. I'll try it AGAIN, but I have a sneaky feeling something else is afoot here...
 
I have a method that I think will work for you.
But try "the regular way" first (again).

If that STILL won't work for you, I'm willing to speculate that "my way" WILL work.
But I'm not going through the trouble of writing up the post unless you really want to hear it AND will try it...
 
Hope nobody saw what I just posted, I solved the issue and will try again.

I give up... I think I saw hat might have caused my original issues, so I again did the process. This time when I logged into that user I did NOT get the "normal" bunch of messages from Apple, it just dumped me on a bright yellow screen. At least now my menus drop down and I can choose something. HOWEVER I could NOT choose a wallpaper. I just get a constantly spinning wait animation. Tried setting a screensaver, no good there either. Yeah that second account is an admin one, allowed to modified the computer. My general feeling is that everything in there seems stuck in mud. If I ghet ambitious I may call the fruit... there is SOMETHING in there that is causing this and I have no idea how to track it down.

Ha, tried logging into that new user, this time if sat there with the wait animation for ever. All I could do was force shut down the machine (hold the power button until it shut off, took a while).
 
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I am WITHDRAWING an earlier post made about an alternative method to create a new user account.

It worked with Intel based Macs, that's what my knowledge was based upon.

HOWEVER... I tried it this morning with an Apple Silicon Mac running both Tahoe and Sonoma (MacBook Pro 14" m1pro CPU) -- and the trick that previously worked with Intel NO LONGER WORKS with Apple Silicon.

One used to be able to delete the invisible ".AppleSetupDone" file, and invoke setup assistant to run at boot time again (just as if the Mac was new). And then create a new account that way.

However, trying to delete this file on my Apple Silicon Mac didn't seem to work. It would boot right back up and offer me my "regular" account.

I'm wondering if this has to do with the creation of a "secure token" when one sets up a brand-new Mac. I just don't know.

In any case, the OP will have to find another way.
Have you tried booting up while holding down the shift key?
Used to be old "safe mode", not even sure if that works any more...
 
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Creating another user account is a process that has existed 4 ever, at least since X was introduced. I have used it many, many times before, but yes, only on Intel machines. Not sure I see the chip itself being the culprit. This IMO is basic slip-shod OS coding that I guess they ignore because their "customers" buying into the "everything soldered together" have no clue or need to create separate accounts. So they pay no attention to it. If I get ambitious (and summer ends) I may try to call them, I have had very occasional talks with folks there who really know their stuff. Thank God I don 't have multiple family members living with me!
 
Creating new user is not rocket science and GUI method does work in normal situation. And no, you do not need to sign into anything, you can run as new local user. If you have these issues, may be something else is wrong and my first wild guess would be SSD. That was usually the culprit when I saw wait animation. Would you run Disk utility First Aid, just to be sure? I assume you have backup of your data...
 
Yes, everything's backed up daily. All my important stuff is also located on multiple other devices as well. Machine is 6 months old, First Aid gives it a clean bill of heath. I have zero issues on my primary account. Recall I have tried over half a dozen times with the same results... behavior that precludes me from operating from that user.
 
paulcons said:
Recall I have tried over half a dozen times with the same results... behavior that precludes me from operating from that user.
Click to expand...
Curious... can you post the output of this command? It will list all existing users except for system users.
dscl . -list /Users | grep -v "^_"
 
Bigwaff said:
Curious... can you post the output of this command? It will list all existing users except for system users.
dscl . -list /Users | grep -v "^_"
Click to expand...
I've deleted all the "damaged" secondary accounts on my machine. I'll go through the exercise again to show you that output:
Hmmm, command not found, using zsh... tried bash, still no go.
 
Another way to do it (in the usual "Fishrrman convoluted way™") ...

1. BACK UP your current user data to either a tm backup or (better yet) a "cloned" backup created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

2. Use the "erase all content and settings" option to [literally] "wipe" the Mini back to its "fresh-out-of-the-box" state.

3. Now you will see the initial setup screen, just as when you powered it up for the very first time (ALL personal data and settings are gone).

4. Connect your backup drive, and run through the setup procedure, and when setup assistant presents you with a list of stuff to migrate, select apps, settings, and data. But pay attention to the user accounts.
You want to select ONLY your primary user account. Anything else -- UNCHECK it.

5. Once the migration is done, "look around" to make sure your account and other stuff looks as it should.

6. NOW try going to the Users & Groups settings pane and try to create a new, second account. Do things go any better?

If this STILL doesn't work, there are other tricks you could try.
But let's not get into that yet.
 
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Honza1 said:
should be here: /usr/bin/dscl
try using that...
Click to expand...
I concatenated the 2 strings... now I got something... not sure what it means. Here is the list:

daemon
nobody
<main account>
riversidetech <newly create admin. user>
root

Gonna go try that secondary account again.
 
I deleted the new account listed above. Thought that maybe because I just used the same PW as my main. account was causing issues, so I tried AGAIN with a different password. Here's how it went:

Skipped Apple Account & Set up AI. sometime when I hover over a menu, it drops down and stays down. Sometimes, even holding the mouse button down, it drops down but it's hit or miss if I choose a menu item. Wanted to set the desktop to snap to grid, but cmd. J did NOT bring up the dialog, it just beeped. Did a right click on the desktop and tried to select "show options." NOW I see the dialog. Except, every time I tried to mouse over to it, it disappeared. Clicking on the desktop showed the dialog, but as soon as I tried to mouse to it, it disappeared.

Clearly something is just wrong. Only an Apple engineer who can give me some terminal commands might stand a chance. Sorry, but I am not willing to go through the whole process of wiping and restoring via migration. I did that once getting this machine rolling and ev erything worked exactly as I hoped it would.
 
If you can launch Screen Capture, recreate the activity while recording a movie. This will be fascinating to see in action.
 
OP wrote:
"Clearly something is just wrong."

Which is why I again recommend that you try what I posted in reply 15 above...
 
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