Help! Reset the password and now master account at log in is missing??????

Question

I really need you help on this. Today I was helping my younger cousin with his macbook. He lost his password so I put in the disk that came with it and held down C and went to Utilities/reset password and reset the main account password. I might have reset the Home Permissions and ACLs. I reboot the computer and in the login screen only show the other that was made and not the main account. So the master account is mission how do back so I can log in it. Can anyone help?
Mike

Answer 1

is the other account admin? if yes, log in as the other user and run the following terminal command
sudo rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/short-user-name.plist
Instead of short-user-name put in the above the short name of your main user which is now missing. It's the same as the name of that user's home directory in /Users folder which should still be there.
You'll have to enter the admin password which you won't see as you type it. that's normal.
Please make sure you copy the command EXACTLY as given. it's very important. we don't want to delete the wrong thing here. this will delete the directory services record for the missing user.
Restart, log in as the other user again and try creating an account with the short user name of your main missing user in system preferences->accounts. it will say that a home directory by that name already exists and ask if you want to use it. say "yes".
this should bring the account back.
if the only currently existing account on the computer is not admin then boot from the install DVd and using the password reset utility activate root (=System administrator). then log in as root and perform the same steps as above.