I am trying to help a friend who is an elderly widow, whose late husband passed away early this year. He was quite tech savvy and took care of all the computer needs in the family.
She needed a printer, and I helped her set it up yesterday. The problem is that it needs software to run through the computer. I can’t install the software without the administrator password, and I can’t reset the administrator password without the Apple ID.
I was able to reset the Apple ID password using her phone, but the reset doesn’t seem to ‘make it’ to the Mac. When i would try to put in the password and username that worked in her iPhone, the dialog box gave me the little shake that a bad password has.
In the end, I suggested an appointment with the Genius Bar. But I was wondering if there is something else to try in the meantime. There are Also two of my friend’s late husband’s Macs that she can’t get into at all, so a trip to the Genius Bar might be needed anyway.
You can force-reset the admin password.
The problem is, you will lose access to any saved passwords (browser, email, etc.). If you decide that it’s worth it to do this, post back with the OS version, and I’ll post with the procedure.
ETA: The genius bar isn’t going to be able to do anything else, either, assuming that the machines are not registered with iCloud.
Thanks, beowulff. I will have to check with my friend about whether she wants to do that. She will probably want to check to see if she has functioning passwords for his email before she makes that decision.
I think that they might have been linked to iCloud at some point, but the backup has stopped working. From what I remember, there was a dialog box that popped up that said it needed a password to continue the backup. I could be wrong, because I was looking at other things and am definitely not Mac-savvy.
When you log in with an Apple ID to a new device (or re-login to an existing device) and you have another Apple device, Apple uses the other device for 2-factor authentication.
So, when you try to log in to the Mac, the phone will pop up a “Someone is trying to log in, do you approve?” prompt, and then display 6 numbers.
Here’s the tricky part: If the computer you’re logging into is new enough, it knows about this process and will give you a user/pass entry followed by a 6-digit-code entry box. If it’s older, you have to concatenate the password and the 6-digit code.
So, if the user is John, and password is “secret4me”, and the 6-digit code you get on the phone when trying to log in is 245877, then you need to log in as:
user: John
pass: secret4me245877
This is very non-obvious and tripped me up a few times.
Find a spare drive, and back up, I use SuperDuper!, before proceeding.
Else much data may disappear forever.
Many admin passwords are quite simple, as the OS makes you type them often.
Try the obvious ones; names of people and such. No one wants to type GrY4&888Zxyq7347*node just to change their login items.
Thanks for the idea. I have no idea which OS the Mac is running, but I can try that out the next time. I’m not sure that the computer triggered the multi-factor authentication when I was trying to use the Apple ID to resent the administrator password. I think my friend was holding the phone at that time, and she might very well not have noticed the screen popping up.
Thanks, everyone for the ideas. I don’t think that this is important enough to try hacking in one way or the other. I have to explain every step that I take to my elderly friend, and I don’t see that part of it going well!
And, yes, bob++, this has inspired me to do some privacy/security planning in case I am ever incapacitated. My survivors shouldn’t have to deal with this.
