I forgot my admin password...help
I haven't restarted my computer in so long that I forgot the admin password so now I am a guest user.
How do I change or find my old admin password ?????
Thank You
9 replies
Socalfem52 wrote:
I haven't restarted my computer in so long that I forgot the admin password so now I am a guest user.
How do I change or find my old admin password ?????
Thank You
To tackle the other part of your issue, you should restart your computer more often than "never." I shut down every night because why have it on if I'm not using it? I put it to sleep for short periods of inactivity, but when I go to sleep, that's 7-8 hours of non-use. Seems silly to have it on in that instance. It's not a matter of it using up tons of energy or anything, I know it won't, but I don't think it's good for your computer to never be shut down, particularly since updating/upgrading the OS alone will require at least a restart.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for responding !
I am on a Guest User and I tried earlier to change my password but it said that if I do it as Guest User that it will delete all my files !!!
What else can I do ???
P.S. I have El Capitan 10.11.4
this has nothing to do with forgetting my password
I understand what you mean, I will start shutting it down more often
Do you have a answer to my question though ????
If you forgot your password, then not much you can do unless you had set it up to allow your Apple ID to reset your password. If so, you would select that from the login screen.
If I take it to the Apple store can they help me Glenn ?
I can't get my photos or any files at all as a guest !
There wouldn't be much point in password protecting information in accounts if it would be easy to get into. You forgot your password, then you probably lost your info. The apple store will not be able to retrieve your info.
Change or reset the password of an OS X user account - Apple Support
Socalfem52 wrote:
If I take it to the Apple store can they help me Glenn ?
I can't get my photos or any files at all as a guest !
The Apple Store can't do anything for you. Do you have your photos and other files saved to an external hard drive so you can copy them back to your computer?
I'm not sure what message you are referring to while trying to change the password in the Guest account, but I think it has to do with logging out of Guest which will delete anything you created in the Guest account, not the one you are trying to recover the password. Also, you cannot change your account password from Guest as you would need an Admin password to reset the password. Since you can't remember yours, there is no way to change it short of the link Eric posted (and another, more error-prone method).
You can't change your password while logged in as Guest. You need to boot into Recovery as noted on the second bullet of the link Eric posted.
When you reset the password that way, all of your stored passwords will be lost. You will have to restore/remember all of your website, email, etc passwords that were stored in the keychain. No, there is no way to recover those without the original password.
Now, if you had FileVault enabled, then you will not be able to recover anything. Neither will Apple.
I forgot my admin password...help