I am getting the "access to this item is restricted" message when I am attempting to show the password for my keychain items. Normally, I can just enter the password and see the information that is needed, but suddenly all of them are showing this message. Does anyone have ideas on why this is suddenly happening and what I can do to fix it?
powerbook 2.6 Ghz Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.4), 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Keychain First Aid
Open Keychain Access & choose kychain access > Keychain first aid.
Keychain First Aid can help you solve some problems you might encounter, for example:
I just figured this out and will post what worked for me--it's just a more detailed version of what macpos offered, because I had trouble finding the places he mentioned.
Open Keychain Access, which is in your Applications/Utilities folder. There should be two sections on the left sidebar, Keychains and Category. When I opened it, only the Category section showed, but I eventually found an arrow which expanded the Keychains section.
Choose Login in the Keychains section, and "Passwords" in the Category section. Use the search field to find the program you need the password for, and double-click on it. A window with that program's label will open. Under the Attributes tab, click on the little Show Password checkbox. You'll be asked for your admin password. Once you've entered it, the password will appear in the Show Password field.
As an aside, I thought this is what I was doing all along, so here's another thing I did before it started working: I found Keychain First Aid and ran both the Verify and Repair options. Both of these reported no problems, but it might have done something to encourage things to work right.*
*As you can tell, I anthropomorphize my electronic devices. It's the only way to cope with the way they misbehave.
I have tried that but even within the keychain program it is asking for passwords for everything I try to do and is not accepting any password that I might have ever used on this machine. I have very few things that I use for major passwords for the machines in my house and none of them are accepted. After I tell it to reset and enter my system paasword I then get another password prompt for the routines being run within the program. I finally did a restore on the first machine and so far so good but the same issue popped up on a second machine, my primary, this morning. This seems like either some kind of malware or an OS bug. I would appreciate any other suggestions.
Thanks,
Rick
Why is keychain suddenely saying "access to this item is restricted"?
