Lost Admin Privileges

See http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1278

If you properly created your root user password, then Other should be an option at the login window. Use it to log in and reset the hosed user account. There's nothing in that linked article referencing Disk Utility.

log in as root again and run the following terminal command

dscl . read /groups/admin GroupMembership

it will list current admin users. what's the output?

is ahinkle628 your main user? then it's now admin. the reason its admin checkbox is grayed out is because the system won't let you remove admin privileges from the last admin user (root does not count). you should now be able to do all necessary admin tasks while logged in as ahinkle628. one other thing that may interfere with this is curstom keyboard layout. log in as ahinkle628, delete the file /Users/username/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.* and log out/in. see if you can do admin tasks now.

before you go for a reinstall create a new admin user, log into it and see if you can do admin tasks from there. can you?

loveofjoe11 wrote:
Once I create a new account, I have admin privileges.

When I am in the hosed account, there is not a pop-up asking for the password, it just says "authenticating" and then remains locked.

I can just use the new account, but all of my settings are saved on the original account. Is there a way to try to get the original working now that we know it's a problem with the account?

we can try. i still don't know what the problem is with the old account. but i can tell you that a reinstall will most likely not fix it as the problem seems to be with some user files in that account. just to make sure, after you deleted the file I told you in the main account did you log out/in? nothing would be fixed until you do.

if you did log out/in, check any login items on the main account (system preferences->accounts->login items). maybe one of them is doing something weird. remove them all and log out/in. see if that makes a difference.

you can try reinstalling 10.6.2 combo update but I doubt it will do any good. it won't hurt though so ther eis no harm trying.

let's try to recreate your main admin account. there may be something weird in its directory services record.
log out of it and log in as root. go to system preferences->accounts. control-click on account ahinkle628 and select "advanced options...". in the resulting popup change the home directory of the account to something nonexistent like /users/ahinkle628-old.
then click "ok". then delete that account using the minus button. this will only delete the directory services record of that account but not its home directory. then use + to recreate this account. make sure you give it the same name ahinkle628 and the same password. you'll get a popup saying that a home directory but that name already exists and asking if you want to use it. say yes. then log in as ahinkle628 and see if you can do admin tasks now.