MacOS – Can’t use or change the system password. Lion 10.7.5

disk-utilityhard drivemacospassword

I've been having password problems for the past month or so. I first noticed that I couldn't update Flash because the installer rejected my system password. Today I tried to solve the problem, looking online for fixes, but nothing has worked so far.

Tried to reset my password on the "Users & Groups" System Preferences pane.
Restarted holding Option at the boot chimes > "Recovery HD" > "Mac OS X Utilities" > "Utilities" > "Terminal". Entered reset password on the command line. Kept terminal open. Completed the "Reset Password" pane. "Password not saved. You may not have permission to edit this disk or a general failure has occurred."
Restarted in "Single-User Mode": Command+S at boot chimes. In the command line I entered:
```
mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
dscl . passwd /Users/myusername mypassword
reboot
```
After this third attempt, I attempted to install some software and received the following message: "An error prevented the installation of …. Authorization failed. 100022".

I also used Disk Utility on my "Macintosh HD" to verify and repair permissions, which was successful; however, when I tried to verify and repair the disk itself, I got "Incorrect number of thread records (4, 24418)".

I purchased a new SSD and battery earlier this summer, knowing that I would have to clone my existing HDD to the new drive, but now I can't do much of anything without my password. If I could get a working password, I could try to repair my HDD with DiskWarrior.

Here's another question: how can I create a "Repair Disk Partition" on my new SSD, using existing 10.7 software? Here's an article which seems to say the Disk Utility can do it: "OS X: About Recovery Disk Assistant" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202294.

If I only had a password! Thank you all in advance for your wisdom.

Best Answer

Perhaps try enabling the root user from single user mode?

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
passwd root

https://www.personalmacgeniuses.com/2013/10/31/case-of-the-missing-admin-account/#.V8qUxGW_2AU

Suggestions

Review System Preferences

Create another user.

Use the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences. In the FileVault tab, click Enable Users… then in the sheet, ensure that all required users are enabled.

Hint

System Preferences may show that FileVault is enabled, with a recovery key, when there is encryption with Core Storage, but neither FileVault 2 nor a recovery key. I reported this bug to Apple a while ago.

Similarly, but not the same bug:

I assume that System Preferences may show FileVault disabled on a system where most elements of FileVault are enabled.

Thorough application of Disk Utility

Ensure that the utility is applied:

to the logical volume group, which appears to contain the logical volume.

(Where Core Storage is used, Disk Utility in 10.8 can not show the physical disk.)

If you select the LV alone, then verification will omit the partition map.

Observations

Conversion Status: Failed

If encryption was applied when the volume was created (typically: erasure with Disk Utility) then:

there was no conversion forward
conversion backward can not begin.

Conversion Direction: backward

This implies that:

recently, conversion backward did begin
previously, the logical volume was the result of conversion forward (not the result of erasure with Disk Utility).

diskutil coreStorage encryptVolume 4FDED44E-EC4B-4B11-9FF5-9C958BD8CEAB

That could apply if logical volume 4FDED44E-EC4B-4B11-9FF5-9C958BD8CEAB was not encrypted.

As the LV is already encrypted, the response from diskutil is correct.

The question in Apple Support Communities

From the opening poster:

Cannot enable FileVault

Does the resolution there in ASC, the bounty here in Ask Different, mean that Dennis continues to seek a more detailed answer, a better resolution?

Code -69755

-69755 appears in another discussion:

FileVault failed and now I can't turn it off.

Interpreting the failure

Pessimistically but realistically:

a failure to convert – with conversion of nothing – may indicate media failure, possibly in or around the area occupied by the extents file.

MacOS – MacBook Air won’t start up, won’t enter secure mode and repair in Disk Utility

It seems that you may be trying to fsck the wrong partition. You can use duskutil to find which disk is your boot disk

diskutil list

You're looking for something named usually "Macintosh HD" or "Yosemite". Try the fsck on that, and if you're still getting the "Resource busy" error, try to unmount it, either in the Disk Utility in recovery, or by using diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk# and trying again.

Hope this helps!