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3

On my mac I have 2 accounts and the both are normal account. So in this moment I don't have a Administrator account, only one that was in the past a administrator, but now is not.

How I can have again a Administrator account?

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3  
How did the account become a non admin one? – Mark Dec 31 '14 at 14:38
    
Might be worth going into the user/accounts settings page and seeing if the account that "was" admin can be set back to being admin w/ the rights you currently have. I wasn't aware that OSX allowed you to de-admin all accounts. – Carl Witthoft Dec 31 '14 at 17:40
up vote 15 down vote

You can create a new administrator account by restarting the Setup Assistant:

  1. Boot into Single User Mode ⌘ + S.

  2. Mount the drive by typing /sbin/mount -uw / then ↩ enter.

  3. Remove the Apple Setup Done file by typing rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone then ↩ enter.

  4. Reboot by typing reboot then ↩ enter.

  5. Complete the setup process, creating a new admin account.

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up vote 14 down vote

Boot off the recovery partition, open up terminal, and type

resetpassword

That should bring up a dialog that will allow you to change your password and, maybe, set the account to admin. If you cannot set an account to admin, then you will need to reboot into single user mode (hold Cmd-S while starting up your Mac). When you get to the command line (black screen, white text) type:

mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

This makes the file system writeable, and then removes the file that tells OS X that you've setup the system. Hit Ctrl-D" to continue your boot and you should get the "Welcome to Macintosh" startup and you will be able to setup a NEW account (make sure it is a new account). This account will be an admin account.

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1  
Oh gee, someone else answered whilst I was typing. Still, great minds and all that. – lbutlr Dec 31 '14 at 14:30
up vote 4 down vote

You can boot your Mac into single user mode by holding Cmd-S key while the system startup

  1. mount when read & write mode mount -uw /
  2. you can create admin group and account by using dscl utility

PS: This procedure does require you to type a fair number of commands, you can alternatively use the OS X setup assistant for recreating the admin account. To do so, after booting to Single User mode and setting the file system for write access (see above), then run the following command:

rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

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1  
nelson, I suggest improving your answer by adding the actual dscl commands that he would need to use. Good response but it could be better. I had a hell of a time recently myself trying to figure it out, a good answer on this site would have helped immensely. – Harv Jan 6 '15 at 17:58
    
I used this page recently after I accidentally made myself a standard user - hackmac.org/tutorials/from-standard-to-administrator – Karthik T Dec 23 '15 at 4:44

protected by Community♦ Dec 18 '15 at 22:05

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