Mounting the Startup Volume
In Disk Utility, select the Data volume from the list on the left and click the Mount button. If encrypted, it will ask for your password. Use the password from your old user as it should work.
Once it mounts, quit Disk Utility.
Removing .AppleSetupDone
From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
You do not need to enter any of the commands provided in the various tutorials.
You need to be careful when entering commands in the command line. If you put a space where there should not be one, you could delete important parts of the OS.
At the prompt, enter:
rm -i /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ -\ Data/private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone
I have added the Interactive option (-i) so that it asks you to confirm deleting the file. This is your chance to confirm you have typed the command correctly, and it is going to delete the correct file.
Don't forget to escape the spaces with "\ " as shown in the above command.
Alternatively, you can enclose the entire path in double quotes, like this:
rm -i "/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone"
With double quotes, you don't need to escape the spaces.
If you get any errors, like:
bash: <some characters>: command not found.
You have a space in the line prior to <some characters> and it is trying to run the remainder as a command. You might see this several times if you put a lot of spaces in the wrong places. Did you escape the spaces in the path?
When entering the path in either method, you can type the first few characters and hit the tab key. It should expand that part of the path. If it stops in the middle, like Macintosh\ HD it is waiting for you to clarify which one. In that case, add, \ , and hit tab. It will then know which one you wanted.
If you have renamed your startup drive, just use that name with a " - Data" suffix or whatever it was named as found in Disk Utility when you mounted the Volume.
Restart
Select Restart from the Apple menu. It should boot up as if it just came out of the box.
Complete the Setup Assistant
The Setup Assistant will walk you through setting up the Mac.
Create a new user when prompted, but you do not need to setup iCloud or anything else for that user.
Repair old Admin user account
Log into the new Admin user.
If you have FileVault enabled, you will have to first decrypt the drive using the old admin user password. It will log into that account. From the Apple menu, choose Log Out <your name>âŠ
You should then be able to log into the newly created user account.
- Open Users & Groups System Preferences.
- Click on the Padlock and Authenticate using your new admin user credentials.
- Select the old user from the list.
- Check the box labeled, "allow user to administer this computer."
Log out of the new user and log into your old user.
You can dispose of the new user account once you confirm you can elevate your privileges when necessary from the old user account. For instance, open Users & Groups and try to unlock the Padlock.
Restarting Setup Assistant to create Admi⊠- Apple Community
