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How can I disable Parental Controls when the administrator account does not exists?

Hello,

I'm in a bit of a predicament. I have a Late 2011 Macbook Pro (High Sierra). The computer was erased once and restore from a backup using an external hard drive. But when the restore was performed, the account with the administration privileges was not installed because it was not intended to be the administrator account. Parental controls were already activated before all this. So after restoring the computer without that account, I thought the parental controls wouldn't appear activated. But they are!


So, here's my problem. My account, the one and only account right now. The one that's supposed to be the administrator account, appears as a managed account and tied to the Parental Controls.


How can I fix this? Is there a way to disable these Parental controls without the previous administrator account and switch my account to administrator account again? Cause no matter how much I try, it appears to be useless. Do I have to erase the computer again and restore everything again?

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 16, 2020 11:51 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 16, 2020 2:45 PM

You can create a new administrator account by restarting the Setup Assistant:

  1. Boot into Single User Mode: Start/restart your Mac. As soon as you hear the startup tone, press and hold ⌘ + S until you see a black screen with white lettering. (If you end up back on the login screen after a flash of the black screen with white lettering, enter your password and it will return to the black screen.)
  2. Check and repair the drive by typing /sbin/fsck -fy then ↩ enter - as directed by the on-screen text.
  3. Mount the drive as read-write by typing /sbin/mount -uw / then ↩ enter.
  4. Remove the Apple Setup Done file by typing rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone then ↩ enter.
  5. Reboot by typing reboot then ↩ enter.
  6. Complete the setup process, creating a new admin account.


Be very careful to notice the spaces in those Terminal Commands.


Once you've done that the computer reboots and it's like the first time you used the machine, except all your data will stile there. Your old accounts are all safe. From there you just change all other account passwords in the account preferences!!

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 16, 2020 2:45 PM in response to Javi_Menar

You can create a new administrator account by restarting the Setup Assistant:

  1. Boot into Single User Mode: Start/restart your Mac. As soon as you hear the startup tone, press and hold ⌘ + S until you see a black screen with white lettering. (If you end up back on the login screen after a flash of the black screen with white lettering, enter your password and it will return to the black screen.)
  2. Check and repair the drive by typing /sbin/fsck -fy then ↩ enter - as directed by the on-screen text.
  3. Mount the drive as read-write by typing /sbin/mount -uw / then ↩ enter.
  4. Remove the Apple Setup Done file by typing rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone then ↩ enter.
  5. Reboot by typing reboot then ↩ enter.
  6. Complete the setup process, creating a new admin account.


Be very careful to notice the spaces in those Terminal Commands.


Once you've done that the computer reboots and it's like the first time you used the machine, except all your data will stile there. Your old accounts are all safe. From there you just change all other account passwords in the account preferences!!

How can I disable Parental Controls when the administrator account does not exists?

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