No admin account after Big Sur update from Mojave

dave kowalski · Apr 7, 2021

I decided to take the plunge and update from Mojave to Big Sur. After doing so, all of my user accounts are all "standard", no "admin". Obviously I cannot unlock the preferences pane in system prefs, there being no admin privileges.

I've tried everything here:

1: Reinstalling Big Sur and hoping for a new setup screen so I could add a new user and give admin privileges. Unfortunately I just get the standard sign in screen with the 2 standard users. Nothing that would allow for creating a new user.

2: Resetting PRAM and SMC-many times, no dice!

3: rebooting as single user and using terminal to force the setup screen on reboot. Curiously, my terminal does not put me at "localhost:/root" like it used to but now the prompt is "-bash-3.2#" (minus the quotes.) so any of the various terminal methods I have found fail to work. I am not knowledgeable in Unix so I do things by rote instruction.

I am deadlocked. I was almost ready to do a clean install, erasing everything but even attempting to do a Time Machine backup requires admin authentication as does any other backup scheme or application like CCC. I also have thousands of $$ in plugin licenses that I could upload to the cloud but to do so requires, you guessed it, an admin user.

Fortunately I do have a Carbon Copy Clone of my Macintosh HD, fully bootable, that I did right before the upgrade that I could possibly use migration assistant to get things back but that's about it.

Has anyone experienced this, and have any other ideas as to how to remedy my situation? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave Kowalski
www.davidkowalski.com

dave@davidkowalski.com

HDFan · Apr 7, 2021

Does Apple Support have any suggestions? Since this is a software issue you likely wouldn't need AppleCare to get their help.

Apple_Robert · Apr 7, 2021

I have seen a few posts about this problem. In my opinion, the easiest thing to do is a clean install, and then transfer files over you need from CCC. That will save you time from trying to do a restore.

rossonet · Dec 28, 2021

dave kowalski said:
I decided to take the plunge and update from Mojave to Big Sur. After doing so, all of my user accounts are all "standard", no "admin". Obviously I cannot unlock the preferences pane in system prefs, there being no admin privileges.

I've tried everything here:

1: Reinstalling Big Sur and hoping for a new setup screen so I could add a new user and give admin privileges. Unfortunately I just get the standard sign in screen with the 2 standard users. Nothing that would allow for creating a new user.

2: Resetting PRAM and SMC-many times, no dice!

3: rebooting as single user and using terminal to force the setup screen on reboot. Curiously, my terminal does not put me at "localhost:/root" like it used to but now the prompt is "-bash-3.2#" (minus the quotes.) so any of the various terminal methods I have found fail to work. I am not knowledgeable in Unix so I do things by rote instruction.

I am deadlocked. I was almost ready to do a clean install, erasing everything but even attempting to do a Time Machine backup requires admin authentication as does any other backup scheme or application like CCC. I also have thousands of $$ in plugin licenses that I could upload to the cloud but to do so requires, you guessed it, an admin user.

Fortunately I do have a Carbon Copy Clone of my Macintosh HD, fully bootable, that I did right before the upgrade that I could possibly use migration assistant to get things back but that's about it.

Has anyone experienced this, and have any other ideas as to how to remedy my situation? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave Kowalski
www.davidkowalski.com

dave@davidkowalski.com

Hey Dave,

It's been months, so you've probably figured something out. But if not... and for the rest of you:

I had the exact same issue a few days ago after upgrading to Monterey. I was no longer able to change System Preferences or install new software because I would be asked for username and password. It SHOULD be the same password as you use to log into the computer, but alas, the computer doesn't accept it. Kept giving me the shaking-because-you-have-the-wrong-password thang.

After a bunch of online research, I figured out that the issue is that my username was switched to be a "Standard" user, not an "Admin" user. So... effectively there was NO admin user on my account, thus no way to enter an admin username and password.

The solution is you need to trick the computer into running Setup Assistant again, so you can create a new user. That new user will automatically have admin rights. And then when you log in with that user, you can turn on admin rights for your original username.

I contacted Apple Support, and did a ton more research, and the steps everybody tells you to do are:

Re-start your computer in Recovery Mode, by holding down Command-R during boot-up.
Open Terminal
Type this command. Exactly, including spaces and quotes: rm "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.AppleSetupDone"
Then re-start your computer, and you'll be taken into the Setup Assistant in which you can create a new user.

BUT: the problem for me was, it kept returning an error message in Terminal: "No such file or directory" And then I'd reboot, and no dice. Issue still there.

So.... more calls to Apple Support... and more research.... and through trial and error, this is what I figured out.

After going into Recovery Mode, before going into Terminal, I first went into Disk Utility. For some reason the volume listed as Macintosh HD - Data was showing as "unmounted". So I simply hit the "Mount" button. And THEN I did the above steps, and it worked. Finally. Hallelujah.

It's a major bug. If you're having the same problem, and wanting to throw your computer out of the window, I get it. But hopefully this helps!

Apple, please fix in the next update! Thank you. Happy holidays.

Chewie Dubs · Jan 9, 2022

rossonet said:
Hey Dave,

It's been months, so you've probably figured something out. But if not... and for the rest of you:

I had the exact same issue a few days ago after upgrading to Monterey. I was no longer able to change System Preferences or install new software because I would be asked for username and password. It SHOULD be the same password as you use to log into the computer, but alas, the computer doesn't accept it. Kept giving me the shaking-because-you-have-the-wrong-password thang.

After a bunch of online research, I figured out that the issue is that my username was switched to be a "Standard" user, not an "Admin" user. So... effectively there was NO admin user on my account, thus no way to enter an admin username and password.

The solution is you need to trick the computer into running Setup Assistant again, so you can create a new user. That new user will automatically have admin rights. And then when you log in with that user, you can turn on admin rights for your original username.

I contacted Apple Support, and did a ton more research, and the steps everybody tells you to do are:

Re-start your computer in Recovery Mode, by holding down Command-R during boot-up.

Open Terminal

Type this command. Exactly, including spaces and quotes: rm "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.AppleSetupDone"

Then re-start your computer, and you'll be taken into the Setup Assistant in which you can create a new user.

BUT: the problem for me was, it kept returning an error message in Terminal: "No such file or directory" And then I'd reboot, and no dice. Issue still there.

So.... more calls to Apple Support... and more research.... and through trial and error, this is what I figured out.

After going into Recovery Mode, before going into Terminal, I first went into Disk Utility. For some reason the volume listed as Macintosh HD - Data was showing as "unmounted". So I simply hit the "Mount" button. And THEN I did the above steps, and it worked. Finally. Hallelujah.

It's a major bug. If you're having the same problem, and wanting to throw your computer out of the window, I get it. But hopefully this helps!

Apple, please fix in the next update! Thank you. Happy holidays.

Just wanted to add that this solution worked for me perfectly - thanks for posting

MBAir2010 · Jan 9, 2022