afonso33 wrote:
Hey, what happened originally was that was an admin account and I was trying to delete a third user using the solution on the link that I posted, copying the GeneratedUID from the 3rd one onto and pasting it to that one, I believe that's what messed it up as even in recovery mode I can't reset password.
OK. The note from the moderators suggested what they removed was personal information. It sounds like what they removed was simply a link to dangerous information. Obviously they were correct on that point. 😄
The problem here is that there are two identifiers. There is a UID which is the standard, traditional Unix user id. The root user has UID 0. Most normal users have UIDs starting at 501. The next one would be 502, then 503, etc. It is possible to move a user account by changing the UID. The trick is that you also have to change the ownership of all the files in the home directory. Normally that would be done in the Terminal. Maybe you could do it in the Finder too. There is no guarantee that this would be successful however. Mass changing of permissions is tricky stuff.
However, you specifically referred to GeneratedUID, which is something different. This uses the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier - not true, it's way not "universal"). I don't know what this identifier is used for nor what happens when you change it. My guess is that it is a "modern" UID that is associated with ACL permissions. The idea is that if you had a network of computers, all users would be 501. Therefore, you would need something more unique to differentiate each 501 user from all the other 501 users.
But if the GeneratedUID is the one you changed, you'll find it very difficult to recover. There might be some really low-level Terminal tricks where you could look for evidence of some no-longer-used UUID.
I recommend just copying that user's data elsewhere and deleting the user account. You'll never get it back. You will not be able to go into any of the user's directories. You will have to copy the top level directory, maybe the entire /Users/user directory or the individual Desktop, Documents, etc. folders. When you do that, the Finder will prompt you for an admin password and it will copy the data.
I only wanna be able to get into that account as it is my most used one, do you still think its possible?
To be clear - you will never, ever be able to "get into" that account again. It's dead, Jim. You can salvage the data. All the permissions on that data will be scrambled. You won't ever be able to "use" it again. All you can do is create a new user account. You should be able to copy these documents and manually change the permissions. But you can only do this with the documents. Do NOT attempt to re-use any data from the "Library" folder. You can recover any data from iCloud, which hopefully you were using. You might be able to recover things like e-mail manually, but it will be rather difficult.
You did get lucky by having a backup Admin account. That's always a great thing to have. Imagine how much fun this would be if this were your only account?
