No administrator was found

If this happens to anyone else, try enabling filevault in system preferences and then disabling it. That made the missing security token on my imac pro and then in recovery mode I could finally get into the startup security utility with my normal admin pass.

Worked for me!

Thanks!!!!

I have the same Problem. I wiped APFS and formatted my HD MBP 2018 in HFS and I have no administrator password.

When I use recovery mode and enter Startup Security Mode it tells me I have no administrator password, which is corrrect. How can I set one? How can I allow my new 2018 MBP to boot from my external HD or run "Timemachine" I need an administrator password to be able to change the settings. ?? At the moment I have a very expensive brick.

Help? Is there a terminal command that gets around this issue and allows me to use an external HD as a Startup device?

I also have this issue.

I have a 2018 MacBook Pro with the T2 I believe and its a useless brisk right now. How in the world do I do a full on re-install if I can't get any passwords to work, and have no OS installed and the network doesn't work either?

What can I do?

KsanWong wrote:

> Startup Security Utility from the menu bar, it asked me to Enter macOS Password.

Can you verify this not asking for a Firefault or firmware password instead of your admin psswd. (?)

About Startup Security Utility - Apple Support

Worked for me also. Thanks a million!!!

I have the same issue. My MacBook Pro 2018 has had lots of trouble. It's the second, the first one locked me (and everyone else) out permanently.

In short.

- Struggling with getting Bootcamp to work, I ended up with some sort of encryption warnings on the fstree during Disk First Aid

- I fixed that g creating another container and cloning the drive.

- I then erased the original container, cloned the drive back and upgraded it to Mohave Beta.

The Beta resolved all my BootCamp installation issue after about 1½ days of trying stuff.

But now I get an error trying to change the Startup Security Settings - Recovery is trying to change system settings, no administrator was found.

There are two admins on each partition. None of them have changed from previous incarnations.I hoped the system was smart enough to add new admins, if I added another admin user. Not so.

I finally got the darned thing to work overall. Only one more day left installing apps and tweaking the whole thing. I will not do wipe and Network Recovery, which killed my first MacBook so I had to send it back.

Anybody from Apple here? I am hesitant to call support, they will ask for a wipe and restore, even if it kills the machine as it did last time.

I am having this same issue and have tried many ways to resolve this. Step one was to start fresh without Encryption and everything worked. I was able to modify the system via recovery. Step two was to start fresh with Encryption and I could not modify the system via recovery after mounting volume via disk utility. Step three was to start fresh with Case-Sensitive Encryption and I could not modify the system via recovery after mounting the volume via disk utility. In all honesty I have almost tried everything. The last step is to use another mac to mount the volume via Target Disk Mode and see if I can achieve what non encrypted users can. Hopefully there is a solution soon so we "the encrypted users" can make system wide changes via recovery.

'It looks like Apple needs to fix what is broken or mention that the error we are receiving is "working as intended" and provide a solution.' Thank you

I forgot to add that I am using Apples Profile Manager and Automatic Enrollment. "Does that matter?"

In my case, I'll need to let the machine continue Mojave install, then do what's been mentioned, then go back into recovery to get into the menu so I can wipe and install High Sierra.

Tedious but if it works then it works!

I’m having the same problem, using the new Mac Mini late 2018 with the T-2 chip. Unfortunately, my machine is not bootable, since my hard disk appears to have become corrupted, and cannot be recovered via Time Machine or reinstalling Mojave. Neither recovery can be performed since I am missing this administrator login and cannot change the security settings for the disc.

I wish I had a way to toggle the FileVault system preferences, but with no way to boot, I have no access to this method.

I would very much appreciate any suggestions for someone in my situation, with no apparent way to restore my internal hard disk, which is now locked out but corrupted.

Thanks very much,

Larry

Based on my visits, telephone calls, emails, and support forum searching, the eventual solution (and supposedly ONLY solution) was to send my late December 2018 Mac Mini back to Apple for a Logic board replacement. This did indeed solve the problem, but what a PITA.

The prospect of owning a machine with this type of vulnerability once the warranty expires is extremely grim.

Sad but true!

Apparently, the high sensitivity of T2 security and the company policies of protecting customer data, privacy, security, etc., make this specific item especially secretive.

I was hoping that a terminal session, a firmware flash to the bridgeOS Which runs in the T2, or some very limited distribution tools at the Apple Store Genius Bar would fix this problem. I was really shocked that nobody in three tiers of AppleCare support, two separate Apple genius visits, or any web searching revealed ANY corrective Software or firmware solution. It may be possible that Mike Bombich’s Earlier post in this thread does the trick, but my machine was already back at Apple for repair by the time I saw it. It certainly would be worth a try.

I ran into this problem after (regrettably) erasing the hard drive and repartitioning it as APSF Encrypted from a flash drive. After erasing the drive I tried to install a fresh copy of 10.14.3, the computer went through the initial install but failed after transferring the software to the internal drive. With the Startup Security still enabled I was completely locked out of installing an OS on the internal drive! Luckily I had a Time Machine image of another MacBook Pro I could restore to the computer. After the computer was restored I ran into the problem of the missing administrator when trying to turn of External Boot options. The tip about turning on Time Machine and restarting saved the day, I was able to open the Startup Security app and adjust the settings. Thank you very much for taking the time to document the fix.

Just to confirm, you did a Time Machine restore to latest version Mojave 10.14.3 which then allowed you to reboot and fix Startup disk security preferences.

If this is true, it appears that Time Machine knows how to not only create a restored volume but also can automatically create the partition and container scheme you had previously erased.

Thanks for any clarification!

Larry