Half of my preferences are unlocked and won’t lock back

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Level 1

8 points

Half of my preferences are unlocked and won’t lock back

My hacker’s one year anniversary is coming up, and I’d like to oust him from my devices for the occasion. Since that is impossible, does anyone know what to do when half the preference panel panes are unlocked and won’t lock back and the other half won’t open at all? Clicking on “users and groups” for instance has an instant pop-up informing me it is not available.

I would love to do a clean install of the OS, but nothing can be deleted. All delete buttons are greyed out and do not work in the disk utility.

Should I use the command line? I’m logged in as root, but so is the hacker. In the activity manager, both of our actions are now recorded as root.

This is one mess no one seems to want to help me with. Does anyone know how to approach this?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Dec 24, 2021 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Dec 25, 2021 1:13 AM in response to RoseBlueSky

Try booting to Safe Mode. That boot up takes minutes and clears caches and other things that may resolve your problem.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

A lot of times just boot to Safe Mode followed by normal boot resolves problems.

If still problem, then boot to Recovery and repair/First Aid the startup disk. You can't repair/First Aid the disk you booted from.

About macOS Recovery on Intel-based Mac computers - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

103,195 points

Dec 25, 2021 3:30 AM in response to RoseBlueSky

The below will Wipe ALL DATA including the Recovery Volume. There is No Recovery of Data - period.

To perform this action will require booting from a Bootable Installer.

This will have to be performed from a Qualifying Computer to run the version of macOS to be made on the Bootable Installer. Example : Bootable Installer of Monterey would have to be done on a computer that Qualifies to run Monterey.

Once that is done read on for preparing the Destination computer

>> Only works on Intel Based Apple Computers. <<

Extra Special Notation regarding the Touch ID equipped Apple Computer.

About Startup Security Utility and Must Enable from Recovery Mode the ability to boot from External Drive Before Attempting

1 - Shutdown computer and disconnect all external drive Except the newly created Bootable Installer.

2- Restart and immediately hold the OPTION key until the Startup Manager appears and choose the USB Drive.

3 - It will present options >> Disk Utilities >> View >> View ALL attached Drives.

4 - Choose the Upper Most Drive ( not the volumes indented and list below ).

5 - The drive normally is called Apple Media or Apple SSD - that is the drive to Erase and format as APFS with the GUID Partition Map.

6 - Once that is done >> backup out of Disk Utilities and choose install macOS.

7 - Follow the prompts and it may automatically reboot several time.

8 - Upon a final reboot - Setup Assist will present with the newer version of macOS.

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Half of my preferences are unlocked and won’t lock back

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