Account Password Field Too Small

I have never had to perform this maneuver, but Isn't this the perfect opportunity to perform a Password Reset with your Mac OS X Installation DVD?

Insert your Mac OS X DVD.
Reboot and hold down the C key.
At the Welcome splash screen, go up to the Utilities menu and select "Reset Password".
Then choose the account in question.

Let us know if this helps. Cheers!

Actually, when I went to forward the problem just now, I found a thread in which Travis A. had already done so — and a comment posted by the highest-rated contributor to the Leopard and Snow Leopard forums here, as follows:

Travis wrote: "This lady {with a link to this thread} claims that the password input field in System Preferences is longer than the password field at the login window. eww has done a check to confirm that. Perhaps someone at Apple should look into this inconsistency and solve it..."

V.K. commented: "She is wrong. while the password filed at the login window may look short, it will accept long passwords correctly. you just won't see it. I just made a user with a password of 30 characters and had no problems using that password at the login window."

V.K.'s knowledge of the OS is far greater than mine, and he has actually created an account with a long password, whereas I only pretended to enter one. So if you are certain you know the long password you need to enter, I think you should go ahead and enter it, disregarding what appears on the screen as you get beyond the end of the box, and see what happens.

Elianadlf wrote:
Not the same, I do not have the MPW, but I do now, it is not the same.

So you DO have the Master Password, or you DON'T. Your statement above is unclear.

I assume that you are able to reach this window in the Accounts Preferences using the account that you are in now?

Yes, I can, I hold the admin acc.

If your statement "but I do now" means you remember the Master password you created earlier then great! Go to the Accounts Preferences in this Admin account you are using.
Click the gold lock icon in the lower left and enter the username and password if this Admin account you are in.
Then highlight the user account that is 'locked' in the list on the left.
Click "Reset password...".
Enter the Master Password.
Next enter a new password for the 'locked' account. Make it a simple one for now. And enter a hint as well.
Click "Reset Password"

Now log out of this Admin Account and log into the 'locked' account using the new password you just created.

Hi Eliana,

This is interesting! I find it hard to believe that the login window password box would allow fewer characters than the set password box in System Preferences, though I suppose it could be possible!

You'll need to just log in to another account, and change the password of that account in System Preferences. You'll need to provide your administrator password to get authority to do that!

--Travis

Elianadlf wrote:
The only thing that makes me so stubborn about giving up on this is that I actually do have the account password...

Well, then the "Reset Password" option might still be worth it if you are sure yo have the correct user account password, since when logging back into the account you are asked for the old user account password, NOT the Master Password. So the Snow Leopard approach might still be worth it. As was state earlier, just enter the whole thing even though it appears yo can no longer enter characters. Let us know how it goes in the next few days. Cheers!

When you fill the password box, it should keep going. Once it is filled with dots, it will appear it is full but I believe you can keep trying.

Why do you need a password that long anyways? If your worried about it being secure, then include symbols or something rather then length.

If you do purchase the SL disc, I would NOT install it just yet. But put the disc in and when you get to the screen that says "Install Mac OS X", Go up to the "Utilities" menu and select "Reset Password...".

Eliana, it just occurred to me reading back through your posts... you state that you tried creating a new user account using the same password - obviously looking back that was not going to work. How did you go about attempting to create that account?

Why not create another user account using a simple password and user name.

Then logging into that new account will permit you to change the password of your legacy account.

sds: I wondered about that too, so I logged out of my usual account and then pretended to try to log in again, entering "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"as the password. It stopped accepting anything after "x", so apparently a password can contain 24 characters and no more.

This certainly does seem odd, Travis, but Eliana is right. I just set up a new account on my MBP and entered 38 "s" characters, completely filling the password entry box in the Accounts pane of System Preferences, as the password. When I tried to log into the account and enter that password, it appeared to be impossible.

The moral, apparently, is not to use any password longer than what will fit in the login password box.

That is frustrating! The thing about Filevault though is that you need to make sure that the Master Password is something that can be easily accessed or remembered in cases like these. Once that thing is encrypted the only thing that can allow you to view those files is the Master Password or the account password. That's why it's so secure, unfortunately.

You may want to give Apple a call. If for no other reason than to inform them of this odd inconsistency. They may also have suggestions for accessing the account.

--Travis

Eliana, unfortunately, after performing some tests on my end, I don't think the Snow Leopard "Reset password" approach is going to work. Here is what I did:

I took one of my existing user accounts and turned ON File Vault for that account.
Then booted up the Snow Leopard DVD.
Selected "Reset Password...".
Interestingly enough, it allowed me to create a new password for the File Vaulted account, WITHOUT asking for the Master Password.
Unfortunately, when you attempt to log into the account again, the system detects that the account password has been changed and no longer matches the File Vault password. So it asks for the old password before allowing you to log into the account.

Sorry, it doesn't look like this is going to work.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8739.html

+"If you are the administrator of the computer, and you can't remember the master password, the information in your home folder is lost forever."+ http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1909.html

So it appears that without the Master Password, you are not going to get into the File Vault account. I am so sorry. 😟

Report this to Apple Care and they will send it direct to the developers/engineers. I wouldn't be surprised if this is something that would be fixed in 10.6.3

In that case, I suspect you are simply not entering the password correctly.