We’ve had a few student and faculty MacBooks somehow having Standard user accounts and no Administrator accounts. After scouring the Internet, I’ve found the following steps to work well. Removing the .AppleSetupDone file makes the Mac think it hasn’t finished the startup sequence and forces it to startup as new – selecting location, logging into WiFi, agreeing to terms and conditions, etcetera, including creating a new Admin user account.
Don’t stress out when you restart the computer and it looks like a brand new machine. Your current Standard account will still be there when you’ve finished.
- Reboot into Single user mode by pressing and holding Cmd-S at startup.
- At the root# prompt, type:
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone - Reboot
- Go through the startup process. Feel free to skip signing into an Apple Account. Create a new account with a name like Administrator. You can delete this account later.
- Once the computer completes its startup, in System Preferences, select Users & Groups.
- Click the lock and enter the (new) Admin account’s password.
- Click on your Standard account and check the “Allow user to administer this computer” checkbox.
- Log out and log into your formerly Standard account which is now an Admin account.
- If you wish, go back into Users & Groups and delete the Admin account you created in step #4.