My school has 3 macs all currently on Big Sur. The school has has some turnover of IT staff and now cant access the admin side of these to add any more software. Two of them are setup to allow network logins and the other with local sign ins. I have managed to access the Admininstrator log in on the local machine, however this still does not allow additional software to be added.
What can i do to get these to be back to factory settings so we can start again
Per chance, since these are school assets, were they managed via MDM?
One quick way to find out, is as follows:
You will need the people that set them up originally to prepare the computers correctly otherwise you have serious issues. The original setup people need to follow the steps in What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac otherwise the computers will ALWAYS be associated with the individuals that originally set them up. This is a frequent issue with schools and colleges as IT staff tend to rotate quickly and the IT Department does not keep good records. Check with the head of the IT staff there at your school and see if they have detailed records that include the passwords used from the individuals that setup the computers initially.
You should contact Apple support for assistance. You will need to provide valid & acceptable proof of purchase so that Apple can remove any activation locks or firmware locks....it won't be easy to get the correct support team at Apple. This assumes you can even find proof of purchase that is acceptable to Apple....best option is if they are being managed by an MDM.
Unfortunately that is the issue. None of the IT team know anything about these Macs and the person that set them up is no longer contactable.
You can see if the Apple store can help out, but I suspect you will have to throw them away.
Once you've fixed this (I hope you can) the next thing you need to do is to write an IT/asset management policy for the school to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
Reset school based macos
