Mac OS X 10.5.x Special Report: Admin accounts or admin rights suddenly missing

Users are reporting a strange phenomenon where their administrator user accounts are converted to standard user accounts after installation of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

MacFixIt reader Ed Anderson writes:

"Installing Leopard reconfigured my primary user account to 'standard', and in doing so, played havoc with many apps and processes that require it to be at admin level; multiple requests for user names and passwords that I knew were correct, yet denials of service anyway. It would not even let me use the login/keychain update. Spent a half day going through user name and password reconfigurations to get things running again. Even now, I still get asked for a password where before I did not (like mounting network drives) - keychain still seems to be partially broken."

Another reader adds:

"The only account was converted from an Administrator account to a Standard account and thus I couldn't alter anything in System Preferences."

The solution for this issue is to create a root account and then assigning admin privileges to the relegated account by starting in single-user mode and entering these commands:

• mount -uw /
• passwd root (you will be prompted to create a password)
• passwd yourusername (again, you will be prompted to create a password)
• shutdown -r now

You can then startup normally, login into the root account and assign admin priveleges as you choose.

Alternatively, if you have a backup, you can perform reinstall Leopard using the "Erase and install" process, establish a new administrator account, and manually restore your data.

Some users have also reported this issue after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.1.

A report from MacFixIt reader Norman Burns:

"Since updating to Leopard 10.5.1 I appear to have lost all of my administrator rights, the name and password that I have been using since 10.1 are no longer recognized and it is not possible for me to repair disk permissions."

There is also a solution listed this Knowledge Base article -- a multi-step process that involves using the Reset Password command while booted from the Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) DVD. However, this solution has proven fruitless for some users, who continue to lack administrator rights in so-enabled accounts. These users are finding that the only reliable fix is to perform an Archive and Install of Leopard.

Norman followed up:

"I tried all of the suggestions last night but could not get any to work, so it was Archive and Install and everything works now. The restoration of files etc is a regular pain."

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