Unable to change Password

[Wickintime]

A colleague has a late 2011 MBPro which has 8GB RAM and an SSD upgrade. It is running High Sierra. She wants to change her password (it's a very simple one!!) but has hit a problem.

History: She was a teacher and this was a work supplied laptop. When she left, she purchased the laptop and continued to use it. The school has had a changeover of staff and systems and there is no-one there who knows anything about the former IT setup.

Problem: She goes into Users&Groups and her username is highlighted. Under her name it says Admin, Mobile. She selects Change Password and then completes the boxes. However, when she clicks on the blue Change Password she gets a message saying cannot change password as the server is not available.

Is there any way of working around this? Would a clean re-install be possible with a restore from TM?

 

[Brian33]

Hmmm. There is a feature I don't know much about, but it keeps user account information on a server. Open Directory Services or something like that. It's used by organizations like schools and companies to centralize authentication of user accounts. I'm guessing that the laptop was set up to use this and that may be what is causing the problem.

Certainly formatting the drive and re-installing macOS (a clean re-install) would "get rid" of this setup. The question is what would happen after using Migration Assistant to restore the user accounts, applications, settings, etc from a Time Machine backup. I *think* Migration Assistant would do what you want and *not* restore the server-based authentication, but I'm not sure. If it were me I would try it (assuming confidence in the backup(s) available).

Maybe someone here with more experience with organization-based setup will add their opinion...

 

[Wickintime]

Hmmm. There is a feature I don't know much about, but it keeps user account information on a server. Open Directory Services or something like that. It's used by organizations like schools and companies to centralize authentication of user accounts. I'm guessing that the laptop was set up to use this and that may be what is causing the problem.

Certainly formatting the drive and re-installing macOS (a clean re-install) would "get rid" of this setup. The question is what would happen after using Migration Assistant to restore the user accounts, applications, settings, etc from a Time Machine backup. I *think* Migration Assistant would do what you want and *not* restore the server-based authentication, but I'm not sure. If it were me I would try it (assuming confidence in the backup(s) available).

Maybe someone here with more experience with organization-based setup will add their opinion...

Thanks Brian, I had some suspicions along those lines but it is an area which lies beyond my knowledge base. It might also explain why we are unable to delete some applications which lurk on the dock as grey question marks.

My colleague is off to France in 10 days and I would rather not mess around with her laptop just before she departs, so I'm going to put this on hold until she returns. In the meantime, I'll continue researching.

Thanks again.