Help with changing a user account password

imac david

Hi all,



I'm running 10.3.2, and my account is an admin account. My son has a standard account, and he's forgotten his password.



If I go into Users under my account, I can't seem to change his password. I get an error message concerning Keychain.



Is there anything I should be doing that I'm not?



Thanks,



David



PS I did a search before posting this, and a few similar problems were answered by people saying - log in as root. If this is the answer, can someone tell me how I log in as root, how it is different from my account which is the admin account, and what I would actully do if I login like this.

kingofsomewherehot

to log in as root...



1. Open Netinfo Manager (Utilities folder) from within an admin user account.

2. Click on the padlock in the lower left corner of the window that opens ... then type admin your password.

3. In the Security menu, select "Enable Root User"... at this point, I think it will tell you to create a password for root... you'll figure it out.

4. Log out, and log back in using username "root" and the password you created. (If it didn't have you create one, then use the password you created when you first set up the computer.)



I would suggest that when you are done playing as "root", that you return to netinfo and un-enable root user.



When operating as root, it's kinda like having a finder that translates all your commands to Unix's SUDO. You can delete things that shouldn't be deleted, and alter permissions such that other user accounts won't work properly. So use extreme caution if you're not sure about stuff.

imac david

I was wrong - I did change his login password, even though I get the mnessage that "this users keychain password cannot be reset - this password has not been changed".



So can anyone tell me what is going on? I can login to my sons account with the new password that I chose - how will the fact that his keychain password remains this forgotten one affect things? Does it affect anything?



Thanks,



David

karl kuehn

That message just means that the Keycahin does not get the new password, and you would have to re-set it in order for it to automatically unlock the keychain.