Can't delete admin user in High Sierra

I’ve had the same problem with not being able to delete a user account, and I tried everything listed here and even my own troubleshooting. I took my MacBook into the store to get something else diagnosed- before I left I was about to ask the genius about it, went to show him the problem and the “-“ sign WAS NO LONGER GREYED OUT. Not sure what form of wizardry happened but it did. Perhaps it was something to do with the tests they ran. Maybe take it in? It worked for me.

I am having the exact same problem.

Getting the same FileVault related error message in the log.

Even trying to delete the user as root via terminal yields a PermissionError which is ridiculous.

But I did not migrate any user via TimeMachine or the assistant.

I created the temporary user to change my main admin user‘s account name (following the official apple support thread on how to change an admins account name and home folder).

This is truly annoying.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Same issue - and I tried the hawkdive.com website and went through all the steps, to no avail. It's not a huge issue, but the OCD in me can't stand that I have 2 user accounts.... I've tried everything. Dropping it to a standard user, disabling everything, setting it completely up, upgrading, ugh... no idea. Send help, the obsessive compulsive is about to punch someone.

I hope to be able to solve this issue for you and it seems to stem (in my case anyway) from using migration assistant. If you install the new operating system, create a new user account and login and then migrate there seems to be some sort of conflict. Quite what that conflict is I am not sure but I think it relates to the UID/USER ID and password.

You could try this and let me know if it works for you to help anyone else should they run into this issue.

1. LOG OUT of all accounts.

2. LOG IN to the account you wish to delete.

3. CHOOSE SYSTEM PREFERENCES>USERS & GROUPS

4. Click the Padlock and Authenticate.

5. Choose the account in the list that YOU WISH TO KEEP. Remember you should be currently logged into the account you wish to delete.

6. Click CHANGE PASSWORD and change the password of the account which you wish to keep to something else other than that which you were using.

7. LOG OUT of the account.

8. LOG BACK IN to the account you wish to keep with your new password.

9. GO BACK TO SYSTEM PREFERENCES>USERS & GROUPS, click the padlock, authenticate and hopefully when you click on the account you wish to delete the minus symbol will be available and you can simply remove the account.

10. Change your password back to your usual password if thats what you want to do.

Again please do let people know if this works to help others with the same issue. Similarly if it doesn't work for you please also let post and let people know.

Good luck and hopefully this will do the trick for you and any other people running into this issue.

All the best. 😉

Stefan

hello, can you please type out the detailed version? i think i have the same exact issue as you. i've tried everything but nothing is working. it sounds very similar to your issue. i would really appreciate it. thanks.

@Narehate, I tried like everything here, but yours is the only solution that worked. I copied the generated user ID as noted, changed the original, and put that on my account.

For some reason your term command is wonky. Here's the one I used:

diskutil apfs updatePreboot disk1s1

That seems to have done it. Hopefully nothing blows up later!

Thanks.

This looked like it was going to work. The "-" sign was active. I was able to click it. But nothing happened. I really need to delete the original account with all it's data. Any other suggestions, other than complete re-install and brute force through the Disk Util?

Thank you

Thank you Stefan2908! Your solution worked perfectly and ended days of frustrating attempts to delete the extra user. I had used migration assistant as you surmised. Nothing I tried worked, including Terminal. I couldn't think why your suggestion would work and it was with trepidation that I went back to Users & Groups in step 9. But there - finally - was the minus symbol. I clicked it and gladness ensued. 🙂

SOLUTION!!!

Log in with the account you wish to keep

Go on the Terminal App and type the following:

sudo /usr/bin/dscl . -delete "/Users/$user"

Where it says $user" replace “user” with the username you wish to delete, make sure to keep the $ sign.

Thank you, Stefan!

This worked for me on High Sierra. Like others, I had to set up a temp Admin account for installing High Sierra. Then I imported my prior account via Time Machine. But I could not subsequently delete the original temp admin account. Stefan's solution worked for me. Notably, when I reached step 8 in his instructions (logging back in to the account I wanted to keep), I had to re-authorize my iCloud account in System Preferences. Happy to finally be rid of that temp account.

I had success accessing the greyed out Guest User options in System Preferences by using Stefan's previous work around but I still have a phantom guest user pop up as an option when I would restart my MBP in High Sierra. Well, I just ran the last update for the OS on the app store and low and behold, phantom guest user disappeared. Restarted a bunch of times and its true. No phantom guest. Hope that helps anyone still with this issue.

Tr3nton

Thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately, at least in my case, I did not help. Still, the delete button is greyed out and delete the user is not possible.

Hi Stefan,

Sorry, it didn't work for me.

I tried many other suggestions - this is the only one that worked perfectly. Thank you!