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My Mac logged me out and it forces me to login with the Guest account, which for some unknown reason is password protected and I can’t login! I tried restarting it but the issue persists!

Before that happened, it seems like I was logged out from my iCloud account! So I filled in my password and while I was waiting to login, the Mac froze! I restarted it and you know the rest...

What can I do now?

EDIT: I’m now pretty sure that my main account is deleted! I tried resetting my password from terminal in the recovery mode... when prompted to select the account, there was just an empty list!

Sotiris Kaniras
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1 Answers1

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The various options to recover control are quite straightforward to enumerate, and you might have one you think is best to start with:

  1. Boot to recovery and reset the password of one or several admin accounts. (Also, you can use Terminal app in recovery to look if your /User folder is intact before deciding what to do.) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
  2. Make a new admin account, then look / repair / backup / reinstate other accounts. - New MacBook had user accounts already; I deleted admin and can't get back in
  3. Bring another OS to the Mac and backup / fix / diagnose. - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796
  4. Reinstall the OS and see if migration repairs the account - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
  5. Wipe the Mac and load a backup (easy if you know TimeMachine is ready to go) - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Which you choose is mostly up to your skill level and if you know you have a backup - it takes about 10 minutes of time to erase / install then you wait, then it’s 5 minutes to start the restore, and then you wait until it’s done.

The other options can take far less time once you know the steps, but for some take a bit of learning in terminal and could end up with data loss if you don’t just back things up first.

bmike
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