Can't set a blank password

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Level 1

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Can't set a blank password

I recently installed Yosemite on a partition on my hard drive and for some reason it will not allow me to set a blank password for user/admin accounts. I installed Yosemite on a partition about a week ago (deleted that partition and reinstalled on a new partition last night) and it allowed me to do so without trouble but now when I try to leave the "new password" field blank it says that a new password is required. Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), null

Posted on Aug 2, 2015 7:29 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Baby-Boomer-USofA

Level 9

58,098 points

Aug 2, 2015 11:39 AM in response to kbond789

Resetting Password

1. Shut down comp & wait a few minutes.

2. Turn on & at the same time hold down the “command” & “R” keys.

3. Next screen….. In the menu bar click on Utilities (NOT OS X UTILITIES)

4. In the drop down menu, click on Terminal.

5. In the terminal pop up small window: Type exactly—> resetpassword Hit return key.

6. Reset password window will pop up. Follow the onscreen instructions to reset password. Make sure you select the admin account to reset the password.

7. You can ignore the “keychain” pop up windows, which is what I did. Does not affect anything.

You can do the keychain stuff at your leisure.

8. Quit out of everything & restart your computer.

9. Enter your new/reset password.

Once you are back on the desktop, you can go into System Preferences>Users & Groups and keep and/or set up auto login.

Also, check out the following User Tip: Reset the user password in OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite

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Answer 2

kbond789 Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 3, 2015 4:10 PM in response to Baby-Boomer-USofA

Thank you for that information! I've gone through the steps but when I enter the resetpassword command the popup window only shows the partition that contains the Mavericks OS and does not show the partition that contains the Yosemite OS. Any idea on what I can do from there? When i try changing the password through the System Preferences it will not allow me to leave the new password field blank so that is not really an option.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Aug 4, 2015 2:40 PM in response to kbond789

Can you change the password in System Preferences/Users & Groups by actually setting a password.

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Answer 4

kbond789 Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 4, 2015 3:29 PM in response to Eric Root

Yup, it allows me to change the password to a new password. I took a screenshot of the error if that helps. I have done this multiple times on Yosemite before I deleted that partition containing the OS. If I can't fix it I may just delete this partition and re-install Yosemite.

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