I have accidentally admin rights on my Mac user account

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Level 1

96 points

I have accidentally admin rights on my Mac user account

Hello all.

I was trying to tweak my Mac user account this afternoon, (all I wanted to do was capitalise my name that appears in the menu bar), and upon completion I apparently didn't notice that I needed to re-tick the "Allow user to administer this computer' box...

In short, I've ended up being a 'Standard' user instead of an administrator. The trouble is, I can now no longer adjust any of the things that I need an admin user account for. (And, as I was the only admin user account on my Mac, it now has NO admin user at all.)

I have tried to follow a procedure I found to reactivate 'Setup Assistant', the first stage of which involved booting-up while holding down Command + S 'until text appears'. But all that appears is the log-in screen with the option to log in as one of the users. (Did something change with that major security update patch that was released at the back-end of last year?)

Can anyone please help me get my admin rights back?

Thanks in advance.

I'm running macOS 10.13.3 on a late-2010 MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Feb 14, 2018 6:47 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 14, 2018 6:56 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

See this thread… My Mac has No Admin account

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Answer 2

keg55

Level 6

11,755 points

Feb 14, 2018 6:58 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Do you have a current Time Machine back up you can restore from prior to tweaking your user account?

If so, you can boot into your back up and perform a Restore which will erase your drive and restore everything to the drive.

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Answer 3

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

96 points

Feb 14, 2018 8:36 AM in response to CountryGirl56

Hi. Thanks for that.

The instructions on the miapple.me page, to which the link in the thread led, started off with 'reboot holding down Command + S'. As I'd said, though, I'd already tried that and it hadn't worked, but...

It turned out that was because I had a Firmware Password set, and so I had to go through a Recovery Utility Boot first, to turn that off, and then I was able to follow the miapple.me solution. And it worked!

(Seeing my Mac's screen go black with loads and loads of white MSDOS-like text was a bit scary though...)

Thanks again.

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Answer 4

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

96 points

Feb 14, 2018 8:39 AM in response to keg55

Hi. Thanks for that and, yes, I did have a Time Machine backup, but I only wanted to do a full restore as a last resort, after trying everything else. The solution was on a website linked to in the thread the other respondent pointed me towards, and so I'm back up and running again.

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I have accidentally admin rights on my Mac user account

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