Select the hard drive that contains the Mac OS X system software.ħ. Type in the following command: “resetpassword” and press Enter.Ħ. Select “Terminal” from the Utilities window.ĥ. When the Recovery Mode window appears, select the “Utilities” option from the top menu bar.Ĥ. Immediately press and hold the Command + R keys until you see the Apple logo.ģ. Shut down your Mac and then turn it back on.Ģ. This is a special mode that allows you to access the Mac’s system files and make changes without needing to know the password. If you need to change the administrator on your Mac but don’t know the password, you can do so by using the Recovery Mode. The only step left now is to put the shortcut that you changed back.How to Change Administrator on Mac Without Knowing the Password Once you've successfully logged into your own admin account or created a new one, you're almost done. Since you don't want to work in Safe Mode, reboot your computer and sign back in again as normal. Now, you've changed your account password and can log back in using it. Then, run this command to make the new user an admin: net localgroup Administrators username /add Again, swap username and password for the new user's name and new password, like in the example: net user username password /add If you want to create a new user, whether as a backup or because your main account isn't working properly, enter the following. Replace username and password with the actual username of your account and the new password you want to set, per the example after the template: net user username password Then, you can change the password for an account using the following command. To reset your account password, first type net user to see all accounts on your machine. Now you can reset your account password, create a new account, or perform similar actions. This will obviously require another computer, since you can't get into yours.

Setting Up the Password Reset Workaroundįirst, you'll need to create a bootable Windows 10 disk on a flash drive.

In that case, log into the other admin account on your computer and change the password using the command line, which doesn't require jumping through as many hoops. However, if you have another administrator account on the computer aside from the one you're locked out of, you don't need to go through all these steps. If the locked account is the only administrator account on your PC, you'll need to first use a workaround to launch an elevated Command prompt. If you haven't set those up already, however, they won't do you much good now. Windows 10 and 11 allow you to set security questions for local accounts that help you get back in easily from the lock screen if you forget the password. If you don't use a Microsoft account to log into Windows, you'll have to reset the password for a local account. Reset a Local Windows Admin Password Using the Lock Screen Workaround

How to recover admin password on mac