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Admin account gone - unable to fix it

Hey.


So my MacBook Pro (10.7.5) is like an abused child.


Prior to this whole ordeal, it was already 3 years old with the battery needing an imminent replacement. It's been running slower than usual, and it kept making little 'ticking' noises (sometimes these noises were more like scratching noises, as if there's something that's destroying it from the inside, piece by piece).

I don't know whether or not this might be related to my other problems, but anyway:


One day the startup was taking forever, and the user menu didn't display my admin account, only the guest account which I never use. I logged into the latter and opened the Users & Groups window in preferences. There, the only user on display was the guest user. My main account, which I have not backed up in forever and which also contains all my precious files is gone!


First, I started the disk utility, which told me there are still 150 GB worth of files on the hard drive.


So I started up as the root user, deleted the .AppleSetupDone file, rebooted, created a different Admin account believing that I could ultimately restore the account that was missing. But as soon as I logged into the new Admin account, the computer went into slowmo and the account that went missing is still not in the Users & Groups menu.


How can I restore the account that's gone?



Thanks.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), iOS 7.0.5

Posted on Mar 8, 2014 7:34 AM

Reply
2 replies

Mar 8, 2014 11:35 AM in response to BHol14

BHol14,


you have not yet confirmed that the files from your main account are gone. (Is there a reason why you’d chosen to not back up files which you consider “precious”?)


Try logging in as the new administrative user. In Finder, press Command-Shift-U to bring up the Utilities folder, and run Terminal there. In the Terminal window, run the following command, pressing the Return key at the end of the line:


ls /Users


Is your main account shown in the output from that command?

Admin account gone - unable to fix it

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