[Faceplant]

This is an interesting issue I encountered yesterday since installing Leopard. On my MacBook, once installed, things were going nicely and since I am an update junkie, I tried to install the SW update, and it asked for an administrator name and password. I typed it in and it treated me like I am some common user rather than the administrator! Turns out, I got demoted by the system to "Standard", and there was no access to administrator.

If you have run into this, here is the fix.
Go into single user mode by restarting and mashing down on Command-S

Here are the commands to type, and be aware of spaces

/sbin/fsck -y [Enter]
/sbin/mount -uaw [Enter]
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone [Enter]
reboot [Enter]

Now, the 'puter will start as if it is new, but all your stuff is still there. When asked for a password, you will need to come up with a new user name and password, and when asked if you are moving stuff from another 'puter, select Do Not Transfer Local Data.

Once all is said and done, you will have a new administrator, and your stuff will all be under a standard account, which I think is rather irritating. This is MY friggin 'puter, and I don't want to ever have to switch between administrator and standard account.

Do any of you know of another work around? Is there a way I can transfer all my settings and make this the administrator account?

[Big Mac]

Why not just upgrade the old account back to administrator status with your new administrator account?

[Faceplant]

I am not sure how to do that.

[Faceplant]

Oh Wait...
I see now. I check a little box. Coolness!
Things are back to normal.
I hope my posting has helped someone.

[rodllew]

Same thing happened to me. I have never gone into the single user mode and I really don't know what that means. I am going to try it, however.

[rodllew]

When I typed the first line in and hit enter, a whole page of gobbledegook appeared. I tried the next line and same stuff appeared. I finished the lines and rebooted and it just didn't work for me;

[Big Mac]

You have to type the commands exactly as he showed them.

[rodllew]

I hate to think I am stupid, but I did type in the first line exactly as written, yet when I hit [Enter] it won't let me type a second line. It takes action when I hit the key. I even tried to type in the word [Enter] after the -y and that didn' t work either. I am at my witts end on this.

[Faceplant]

What I did was Google leopard administrator password and lots of info came up. It has hints as well as fixes in various places and will confirm what I am saying. I just spoke to an Apple rep on a different matter, and asked him what issues were presenting. He said this one as well as a blue screen were the two most common issues.

[Big Mac]

Okay, well, unless something changed in Leopard, you don't need to point to sbin to run fsck. After you startup holding command-S, type fsck -yf. Then type mount -uaw. Then do the next command he listed.