Can't change my password after upgrading to Catalina?

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Level 2

264 points

Can't change my password after upgrading to Catalina?

I upgraded my 2017 MacBook Pro to Catalina and now I can't change my login password. When I try and change the password, I get the following error:

The password for the account “XXX” was not changed.

Your system administrator may not allow you to change your password or there was some other problem with your password. Contact your system administrator for help.

I'm the only admin user on the machine. I created a second admin user and logged into that account to try and reset the password, but that doesn't work either.

Anyone else having this issue?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Mar 11, 2020 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Old Toad

Level 10

208,027 points

Mar 11, 2020 11:12 AM in response to kristin.

Is your user account an administrator account? Did you follow these instructions: Change or reset the password of a macOS user account - Apple Support.

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Answer 2

Apr 13, 2020 12:35 AM in response to kristin.

Im having the same issue on my 2015 11" MacBook air but it works fine on my 2019 air. Something did happen when i did the upgrade to Catalina (or maybe it was Mojave - my memory is dim) that complained about me having the same user password and apple id (iCloud) password. So I'm wondering if that has caused an issue.

Any help greatly appreciated!

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Answer 3

kristin. Author

Level 2

264 points

Apr 20, 2020 6:59 AM in response to shanefromsouth melbourne

I ended up having to disable FileVault. After the drive was fully decrypted, I have to boot to the recovery partition and do a password reset from there. That seemed to do the trick for me. Then, I re-enabled FileVault and everything was fine (and I confirmed I could change my password if I needed to). Give that a shot and let me know if it works!

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Answer 4

Mar 11, 2020 11:10 AM in response to kristin.

Try restarting in Safe Mode. Can you then change your password?

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Answer 5

kristin. Author

Level 2

264 points

Mar 11, 2020 11:13 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Yep, no luck. I can boot into recovery mode, and then change the password via the command line, but then when I reboot and try and change it via Preferences, still no-go.

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