[salaryman]

I was using Keychain Access to look up one of my passwords and, of course, it prompts for the keychain password. Unfortunately I don't know what this is and, yes, I know it's not recoverable. My question is, when would I have set this password up in the first place? I honestly don't remember doing this but I'm assuming I must have, right? To help me remember my password, does it enforce any particular requirements, such as capital letters, numbers, etc?

[PCnoMORE]

Your keychain password should be the same as your user account. If you don't have a user password, you don't have a keychain password.

Be aware that some suffer from a corrupted keychain, rendering your account useless. There may be a less intrusive way to resolve the issue but I chose a fresh install and have had no issues since.

[salaryman]

Thanks for your reply.

Originally Posted by PCnoMORE 

Your keychain password should be the same as your user account. If you don't have a user password, you don't have a keychain password.

I have one user account on my Mac and this account DOES have a password. If I use this password when Keychain asks for it, it says it is incorrect.

Originally Posted by PCnoMORE 

Be aware that some suffer from a corrupted keychain, rendering your account useless. There may be a less intrusive way to resolve the issue but I chose a fresh install and have had no issues since.

Given then above, do you think I have a corrupt keychain? I wouldn't have thought so since the keychain still works -- I can add new passwords to it and it remembers the ones currently in there.

Any other ideas?

[Big Mac]

There should be a way to repair the keychain. If you recently changed your login password, the keychain password will still be that old password unless you change it to the new one. If you cannot figure it out I'll look into the topic later.

[salaryman]

Ok, so I have two main Keychains. One is called login and I know the password for this. The other is called System but the 'login' password doesn't work, nor does my account password. I've tried Keychain First Aid and this reports no problems.

If I click Edit/Keychain List in Keychain Access, I can see the two keychains. login is in /Users/[me]/Library/Keychains whilst System is in /Library/Keychains. System has the 'Shared' option ticked, which is interesting since I only have one (admin) account on my Mac. I guess this is the default?

Is the System keychain using a password from an old admin account or something? I wonder if this might explain why I don't have the password? I can't remember exactly but when I first bought my Mac I think I might have set up an Admin account and also a User account. I have since made my User account an admin account and deleted the Admin user (if that makes any sense!). Could this be the source of the problem? I have no idea what the Admin account password was -- I've tried every password I've ever had!

Answers on a postcard...