Unable to change Standard User to Admin

Question

Unable to change Standard User to Admin

I change my newly created Standard user to be an Admin from System Settings, it asks for existing Admin user’s username and password to confirm which I do, it then displays the following warning!

I restart the machine as advised and once I’m back in when I view Users from System Settings I am back to being a Standard user!??

Please help.

P.s I have also tried adding the new username to the sudoers file but it seems to have no effect after starting a new terminal session or restarting the machine.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.4

Posted on Oct 11, 2024 3:41 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 11, 2024 4:51 PM in response to joseph-neenan

Okay; so unlikely to be a corruption.

Update to macOS 14.7, if you’re still on macOS 14.4 as per the footer.

Is the non-admin user logged in anywhere when you attempt to ”admin” the login? Fast User Switching, for instance. If so, log out and try again.

Tried the add-admin sequence when booted into Safe Mode?

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Answer 2

Oct 11, 2024 4:26 PM in response to MrHoffman

This is a fresh install, I have one admin account for personal use and created a second standard user for work. Unfortunately I spent about 4 hours setting up a couple dev environments and other software before realising that ideally this user should also be an admin. I really would like to make this user an admin as I’ve spent so much time getting everything ready 😓

Not made any backups yet!

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Answer 3

Oct 11, 2024 3:58 PM in response to joseph-neenan

Some background around how this situation arose? Maybe the sole admin user was accidentally marked as a non-admin?

Is there a restorable backup from prior to whatever happened that caused this case?

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