HELP! Restore from TM backup, Mac admin password not working

[benji888]

I had a HDD issue, got a new drive, finally got the backup restored to it, now I can't get in to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

My admin password doesn't work so I have tried every other password...Apple ID, iCloud Keychain, my iOS lock password, router passwords...every one I can think of...something is amiss!???? Now, the big problem is, I can reset it using my Apple ID credentials, but, when I do I get this:

"If you change the password for this user account, you will create a new keychain to store the user's passwords.
The user's previous keychain still exists. If you find the previous password, you can access the previous keychain and the information and passwords it contains."

So, I have not hit "OK" here...if I do, now I have to start over again with iCloud Keychain? But my old keychain will still be there unusable? ...what about my iOS devices using that iCloud Keychain??

Ugh, this is not making sense, very frustrating!!!

(mid 2010 MacBook Pro 13, OS X 10.9 mav, also 2 iOS devices w/iOS 7 using same Apple ID/iCloud account, iCloud Keychain on on all 3 devices.)

Note, I also have a guest user account that hasn't been in use, can't log in to that one either.

 

[benji888]

Solved

I didn't get a quick response so decided to format the hard drive and try again. This time I booted from a 10.8 USB drive I had made some months ago and did the restore from time machine backup and I was able to log in (OS X 10.9 mav). It seems ok now, but had to leave for now. So, the first time I did the restore, I booted from 10.7 lion. I would have tried from my external utility drive, but it has 10.6.8 snow leopard, and it doesn't recognize my encrypted TM backup.

I guess it makes a difference which OS X version you boot from, even if it's just for the utilities.