How do I delete the user that was imported on a new Mac from a Time Machine backup?

I just had the same problem. My husband's account was also set to Admin (so I had two admin accounts on my Mac). I needed to delete it, because he never uses it and the iCloud there was set to old email I no longer use, so I couldn't log out from the iCloud. I had the same issue you are describing: logged into my admin account, click the padlock, his account can't be deleted because the ( - ) is greyed out. Here is the catch, and once I did that, it worked for me - just clicking on the account list at the top right corner (between the clock and the Siri icon) and switching to admin account you want to keep DOES NOT log you out of the airwalker account you want to delete. it simply switches between the users. You must click on the apple symbol on the top left corner and select "Log out Airwalker". Once I did that with my husband's account, I was able to successfully delete it after I logged in as the admin on my own account. Does that make sense?

I'm having the same issues and I believe that, on High Sierra, restoring the accounts from a backup with Migration Assistant (instead of from the recovery partition) is causing same corruptions to the directory database. Someone would suggest you to enable root, login with this and try delete the account from system preferences, or to delete it from Directory Utility or via command line. I can tell you that none of these work and the only workaround is to delete the plist file of the account in question by typing:

sudo rm /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/name_of_the_account_you_want_to_del ete

Replace "name_of_the_account_you_want_to_delete" with the short name of the account you want to delete. Terminal will ask your admin password, which will not show up while you write.

You also have another problem: you can't turn on FileVault, as in this thread. I don't know if that's relevant for you. Anyway, at the moment I still haven't found a solution for this second issue.

Lorenzo

I'm having the same issues and I believe that, on High Sierra, restoring the accounts from a backup with Migration Assistant (instead of from the recovery partition) is causing same corruptions to the directory database. Someone would suggest you to enable root, login with this and try delete the account from system preferences, or to delete it from Directory Utility or via command line. I can tell you that none of these work and the only workaround is to delete the plist file of the account in question by typing:

sudo rm /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/name_of_the_account_you_want_to_del ete

Replace "name_of_the_account_you_want_to_delete" with the short name of the account you want to delete. Terminal will ask your admin password, which will not show up while you write.

You also have another problem: you can't turn on FileVault, as in this thread. I don't know if that's relevant for you. Anyway, at the moment I still haven't found a solution for this second issue.

Lorenzo

I'm having the same issues and I believe that, on High Sierra, restoring the accounts from a backup with Migration Assistant (instead of from the recovery partition) is causing same corruptions to the directory database. Someone would suggest you to enable root, login with this and try delete the account from system preferences, or to delete it from Directory Utility or via command line. I can tell you that none of these work and the only workaround is to delete the plist file of the account in question by typing:

sudo rm /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/name_of_the_account_you_want_to_del ete

Replace "name_of_the_account_you_want_to_delete" with the short name of the account you want to delete. Terminal will ask your admin password, which will not show up while you write.

You also have another problem: you can't turn on FileVault, as in this thread. I don't know if that's relevant for you. Anyway, at the moment I still haven't found a solution for this second issue.

Lorenzo

what is the name of the account you are try to delete?

paste it in the command line, replacing the place holder "ACCOUNT"

example:

sudo dscl . delete /Users/NameOfUserAccountHere

>System Preferences>Users&Groups is the correct GUI. macOS Sierra: Delete a user or group

From Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app you can use the command line.

From the terminal copy and paste:

ls -la /Users

This will list all users and privledges, substitute the ACCOUNT name and copy and paste:

sudo dscl . delete /Users/ACCOUNT

airwalker wrote:

The name of the account I want to delete is airwalker

sudo dscl . delete /Users/airwalker

If you want to delete the user airwalker, the command line is:

sudo dscl . delete /Users/airwalker

I've got the same problem. I found the solution here : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203513

I could not the delete the user even there. I had to delete all the records I can within that user, then save, then I could delete it.

Did you click on the padlock?

Is the account that you're currently using an Admin account?

Are you logged out of the account thta you want to remove?

This could have been avoided by using Setup Assistant when you first started up your new Mac.

Migration Assistant will not allow the migration of a user account with the same name as an existing one. Many people have an issue with this because they startup their new Macs, bypass Setup Assistant, then create a user account using the same user name as used on the older Mac. Only to find out, after the fact, that Migaration assistant is not going to populate that account.

One way to correct it, is to just erase the new Mac's internal drive, and then reinstall the OS and then use Setup Assistant, when prompted to transfer the user account from your older Mac.

Just see this thread Guest Login Never Leaves

And what Lanny suggested is to clean the hard drive and reinstall the OS is to be considered .