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Level 1

8 points

Keychain not saving passwords

I have run the verify and repair in first aid and everything passes. Out of frustration I reset Keychain. Now my router information is the ONLY password information showing in Keychain.

No matter how many times I click to save other passwords to Keychain when opening software, the password information does not appear in Keychain. Right now I to have to repeatedly reenter each password.

24" iMac MacBook iPad 32G 3G, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 11, 2011 12:00 PM

Best reply

leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

Level 10

183,930 points

Posted on Jan 11, 2011 12:19 PM

Keychain Access-->Run keychain first aid.

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23 replies

Mar 29, 2011 12:00 AM in response to Barbara Elbe

Too bad the answers have been so facile. It's a complex problem for which there may not be an easy answer.

Like others here, I updated to 10.6.6 and then to 10.6.7. The problems described above started happening.

I called Express Lane and we futzed around. Then the counselor suggested I reinstall from a disc. I didn't have one, so he's sending an installment disc.

But I did have a thumb drive for my MacBook Air and reinstalled the OS 10.6. Result: no changes. This suggests that the discs won't be more successful.

What's odd and apparently (to me) a symptom if not a cause of the problem is that my Keychain interface is missing the System Root, Login, and various certificates, etc. These should appear under a header in the left column, Keychains. (Below that is Category.) The header Keychains is missing. All I have is Category and its subs.

The Express Lane guy didn't have a clue about this. He said to reinstall. As I indicated, I'm reluctant to do that. It probably won't work.

I'm not optimistic about fixing Keychains. I may just kill it and live with a notebook of IDs and PWs. Still looking for a solution.

Apr 6, 2011 8:52 AM in response to Barbara Elbe

I've had this problem with my Aunt's 2010 iMac; she forgot the master password and I performed a reset using the install disk. However, since then she has been plagued by the same issue detailed above, repeated requests for password. I finally had a chance to go to the Apple Genius bar having exhausted all discussion forums to no avail and was given an as yet unproven solution. The guy says he gets this problem all the time and he was pretty confident it would work.

As follows:

1. Close all programs except the Finder and go to Home/Library (may also be Username/Library)
2. Find the Keychains folder in here; delete it
3. Log out / Restart immediately
4. Keychain will recreate the folder and you should be good to go

I will update this post on attempting this fix; it sounds logical though. Anyone who has success, feel free to chime in. I should also point out that this will obviously wipe any application/web passwords you already have saved but I don't think that should be an issue for most people.

Apr 6, 2011 12:19 PM in response to Madasastick

Hmm, it seems I can't edit even my own posts without being a level two member of apple discussions, will have to contribute to the forum more I often I suppose!

Anyway just a quick update to say the the solution I posted above seems to be working perfectly. After all that effort trawling through forums, it was such a simple solution.... at least for my case.

Apr 6, 2011 12:25 PM in response to Madasastick

The problem with this solution, which is recommended by counselors on ExpressLane, is that it wipes out all your current keys, which then have to be replaced one by one as you encounter requests among your favorite applications and websites...IF you can remember them!

A better solution would be a way to interact with individual keys regardless of their place of origin (your computer or someone else's) to make changes to the file. This apparently is impossible, so it's keep everything and endure the endless requests or start over completely and replace each and every key. This does not seem to me to be a user-friendly solution.

rdphoto

Level 1

0 points

Jun 1, 2012 1:28 PM in response to Barbara Elbe

I know this is an old thread, but I was having the same issues, and running the Keychain first aid did not fix the issue. I found that I had 1 application that was not storing my password, even when I clicked the store password checkbox. What fixed my issue is going into my Keychain Access, and selecting the specific keychain for the app that wasn't saving the password.

I double clicked the specific keychain which brought up a new window. I selected the Access Control button, and clicked the option for "Allow all applications to access this item"

That fixed my issue and no longer am prompted for my password

krysztov

Level 1

9 points

Nov 3, 2013 12:31 PM in response to rdphoto

I think I had something similar, one website in particular not saving my login & password; I actually deleted that specific keychain, went back into Safari, noticed Autofill logins & passwords was not checked, enabled that, recreated the keychain, then that fixed the problem.

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Aug 20, 2014 9:55 AM in response to rdphoto

Thank you rdphoto your tip worked! I'm not getting my PW to save. It was tedious doing each one as I have so many logins and things too. But it worked.

Dec 8, 2015 5:35 AM in response to Barbara Elbe

Ok. Same problem here after El Capitan. It might have been my mistake, since I was not willing to wait for that verification sms for more then 2 minutes (it arrived in a few hours). So I have been logging in and out of icloud keychain. This is how i must have messed up something.

What I did was loggged out Icloud Keychain and then deleted the Byhost folder in user/library/preferences and rebooted the system.

Logged back into the icloud keychain and authorized the computer through my Iphone (since today it did arrived at once..the authroization request). Then waited 10 minutes and all passwords came back and no additions windows pop up for the same password.

Keychain not saving passwords