Forgot user account password and can't boot up from El Capitan

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Level 1

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Forgot user account password and can't boot up from El Capitan

Hi. I have El Capitan installed on an external drive hooked up to an iMac running Snow Leopard. I switch back and forth between the two drives usually on a daily basis. The El Capitan drive has been setup for auto login. All of a sudden (as of yesterday) the El Capitan drive is asking me for my User ID and Password. I do not remember the password and am not able to launch El Capitan.

I only created the one User Account when I installed El Capitan. Is there any way I can retrieve my user account password or reset it so that I can get El Capitan up and running?

I saw something about restarting the drive while holding down the COMMAND+R keys and then resetting the password in Terminal. Is this procedure applicable to my situation and is it safe?

Will appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Posted on Aug 6, 2024 9:17 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BDAqua

Level 10

250,319 points

Aug 7, 2024 9:04 AM in response to stopmotion

As long as you're NOT using FileVault...

See if you can create a new administrator account by restarting the Setup Assistant:

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.)
Check and repair the drive by typing /sbin/fsck -fy then ↩ enter - as directed by the on-screen text.
Mount the drive as read-write by typing /sbin/mount -uw / then ↩ enter.
Remove the Apple Setup Done file by typing rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone then ↩ enter.
Reboot by typing reboot then ↩ enter.
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 still be there. Your old accounts are all safe. From there you just change all other account passwords in the account preferences!!

I understand & remember quite well the 1st time I did it, but there's not another way as far as I know. :)

Paste these lines into Text Edit so you can arrow thru & see the spaces...

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

156,530 points

Aug 6, 2024 12:38 PM in response to stopmotion

I saw something about restarting the drive while holding down the COMMAND+R keys and then resetting the password in Terminal. Is this procedure applicable to my situation ...

It might be. Type resetpassword in that Terminal window. That method only works with older OS X versions due to the trivial means by which a password can be reset.

Bear in mind something caused the automatic to spontaneously quit working. The El Capitan boot disk might have suffered some kind of corruption, so might not be fruitful anyway.

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Answer 3

stopmotion Author

Level 1

15 points

Aug 8, 2024 2:29 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for putting all that together. I've used Terminal successfully in the past w/ some simple commands but nothing as involved as what you sent. I admit it is intimidating but even if I were to consider trying this approach, I found that I'm not able to boot into Single User Mode. Pressing and holding ⌘ + S was ignored and the normal login page was displayed.

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