2 admins-

My other mac just went out on me, so I bought another used mac. It works great-BUT.
I started to set up my own stuff under the old admin called 'USER'. I then realized it would be a lot faster to plug in my Seagate backup and import all of my 'stuff'.
In doing this all seemed to work fine, however I now have 2 admins. I want to get rid of the old one 'user' as admin, and just have me as an admin,and the other a standard. However with no password I cannot get into 'user' account to do this.
The old owner is trying to help me but its not working. He did set up a new PW when he cleaned out the computer but it will not work.
Its very confusing having 2 admins,and 1 full account and one only half finished. I have tried and tried, read and read, but can find no way to set the old admin as a standard account and mine as the only admin without the old password.

I'm sure you will have a million questions and this maybe hard to understand,but I really want to get rid of the other admin.

Hopefully someone can make sense enough of this to help me.

mac os high sierra
version 10.13.3 beta (17d46a)
iMac 27” late 2012
memory 32 gb 1600mht DDR3
startup disk macintosh hd

Almost identical to my old one but more storage and more ram

OK, the mistake you made, assuming the original owner set it up to boot into the "Welcome" screens, is that you had created an account before you used Migration Assistant to move stuff rom the backup. MA won't overwrite anything already in an account, as a security function, so it created a new user with the same name and password as was used to set up the backup in the first place. So now you have the two accounts and a mess. Unless you have something critical on the system that is not in the backup, what I would suggest is starting over from scratch. Download the installer from the App Store and use DiskmakerX to create a bootable USB thumb drive. Test that it boots properly, then boot from it, run Disk Utility to erase and format the drive again, which will get rid of the mess you have now, and then install the OS. Boot from the newly installed drive and when it offers to migrate your data for you, do it right then and point to your backup. When it is done, you will have one account with the name and password as it was on the backup. Once in that account (which you said was Admin), then you can create a new account as you want, if you want it. I have a "clean" admin account that I use if there is anything that I think needs doing without any of my normal software loaded. Most of the time I boot into my "normal" account.

If you do this, the only software that might give you any issues will be things that have strong anti-piracy features, like Adobe and MicroSoft products. They will need to be re-registered with the mothership to function correctly. But you will have a new, clean system.

YEP, you are right that is EXACTLY what I did and yes I do have a mess.
If I just ignore the other account and continue with my 'real' one,will it matter? I could probably do as you suggested, but that's a lot to digest when I am not that savvy.As this computer has 3 TB it can handle everything.I just dont want it causing any problems.
Thanks a lot for your help,glad you could understand my question.

Yes, you can ignore the other account. It does take up some space on the drive, however, unless you dropped a done of stuff into it, it won't do any harm being there. If you run out of room on the drive, you can go into System Preferences/Users & Accounts and delete the user and the drive space will be released (basically erased).

@royalpei

As you are understandably concerned about the complexities of handling/merging two accounts, these two articles may be more of academic than practical interest to you; but others coming to this thread might find them useful.

http://pondini.org/OSX/Transfer.html

And in this article, focus on the response by Dansyacht: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3862590

Incidentally, neither approach requires erasing the HD.

Ian

MacInWin said:

Yes, you can ignore the other account. It does take up some space on the drive, however, unless you dropped a done of stuff into it, it won't do any harm being there. If you run out of room on the drive, you can go into System Preferences/Users & Accounts and delete the user and the drive space will be released (basically erased).

Click to expand...

That is all I want to do, it will not allow me too

IWT said:

@royalpei

As you are understandably concerned about the complexities of handling/merging two accounts, these two articles may be more of academic than practical interest to you; but others coming to this thread might find them useful.

http://pondini.org/OSX/Transfer.html

And in this article, focus on the response by Dansyacht: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3862590

Incidentally, neither approach requires erasing the HD.

Ian

Click to expand...

Thanks Ian, I do not want to merge them, I want to delete the other 'user;but with no password (because it too is a moderator) I am stuck with it. My account has a password I set up, the other one I have no idea, I didn't set one up.

This is what it looks like.I can log into mine, but not the 'user'. Do you think it possible the last owners PW is in there even though he changed it to 12345 for ease for me?
Cannot unlock, cannot delete.

As admin, you don't need to log into the other account to delete it. Just log into your account (Sue) and delete the other user. When it prompts for a password, give yours. "User" will then disappear. To delete the User account you first highlight it and then click on the little "-" at the boot of the left hand box.

MacInWin said:

As admin, you don't need to log into the other account to delete it. Just log into your account (Sue) and delete the other user. When it prompts for a password, give yours. "User" will then disappear. To delete the User account you first highlight it and then click on the little "-" at the boot of the left hand box.

Click to expand...

NOPE, tried a hundred times,will not let me.

Then your only option may be to do the reinstall. Something was mucked up in the way User was set up. You might try getting Onyx and let it run to fix permissions on the drive, but any Admin should be able to delete an account (other than it's own, obviously).

When it "will not let" you delete the account what happens? Any error messages?

She can log on as "Root" and delete anything she wants. Root user is very powerful and one must be careful when using it, but it may be easier than having to reinstall.

How to setup the Root user.

@Sue:

Log on as the "Root" user following the instructions given in the article above. As Root user you can remove the other account. After removing the other account, log off as Root and log on as your self. That should work without having to reinstall macOS.

Let us know.

chscag said:

She can log on as "Root" and delete anything she wants. Root user is very powerful and one must be careful when using it, but it may be easier than having to reinstall.

How to setup the Root user.

@Sue:

Log on as the "Root" user following the instructions given in the article above. As Root user you can remove the other account. After removing the other account, log off as Root and log on as your self. That should work without having to reinstall macOS.

Let us know.

Click to expand...

THANK YOU THANK THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are a genius, it worked and was so easy.
This group is FABULOUS, and if and when this site goes down, I hope you will all be there on the new forum.


A most grateful Sue