"Your account is locked" msg after Big Sur upgrade

Upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur about 6 hours ago. have been working on computer ever since. including logging back after screen sleep. Stepped away about 40 mins ago and now it says "your account is locked". I have tried several times, I know my password is correct, but it rejects every-time AND increases the wait time between being able to log in again. I have open documents with important changes that I would hate to lose.

No idea if it will permanently log me out at some point after who knows how many attempts.

Seeing others with this issue, but no answers. Can anyone help?

Powerbook

Posted on Jan 3, 2021 11:57 PM

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godihateitunes Author

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Jan 6, 2021 6:01 PM

Update: this computer is owned by an institution and networked to them (sorry, I really don't know the technical terms to describe that accurately). Our IT people believe it is the mobile network account that Big Sur is having a hissy fit about. Basically, after upgrading MacBookPro (16inch 2019 2.6GHz) from latest Catalina to Big Sur I was locked from using account UNLESS I was in the building AND connected to the network via ethernet cable (wifi didn't work). After logging in on the ethernet, backed up to Time Machine on external HD while still in Big Sur (pointless it turns out). Also had a Time Machine back up from a week ago. Decision was made to roll back to Catalina. Could not restore from Time Machine initially because of that Big Sur back up, but IT-folk did magic things. Then previous catalina back up was used successfully as restore. Final comment from IT department: "Big Sur doesn't appear to allow its pre-existing Catalina mobile accounts to log in without the ethernet connected. Ended up rolling back to Catalina via Time Machine and re-binding to ensure the latest password is active." This took about a day and a bit to sort. I now have a separate but possible related issue - the external HD is no longer being recognised by the MacBookPro (but is perfectly fine on my 2011 MacAir...)

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22 replies

May 10, 2021 6:45 AM in response to swapnil239

It was super helpful, Thank YOU very much, same exact issue. After upgrade from Catalina to Bigsur wasn't able to login (at home).

Came to the office, able to login, however, wasn't able to change any settings which requires Admin access.

Tried to unbind and bind again to the corporate domain AD, didnt helped.

Tried change the password and resync it with AD, didn't helped.

Tried to reset the admin permissions and grant again. Same issue.

Seems like something is cashed on the mobile account, some sort of CFG file which is corrupted after moving from Catalina to BigSur.

Your solution worked for me, thanks again. Im an IT manager managing a full office of Macbooks, will keep investigating. If i'll find any shortcut, will let you know.

APPLE, its very frustrating such things after upgrading to an OS which is on AIR for a while now... Such issue have a heavy impact on our users.

Jan 6, 2021 8:43 AM in response to godihateitunes

Is this a local account? Or is this a directory-enabled account (MSAD or Azure)? I'm having the same problem with a AD-enabled account.

Jan 6, 2021 5:49 PM in response to gatorboots

Didn't work for me either! Hijack away :)

Jan 7, 2021 1:33 AM in response to gatorboots

@gatorboots - wishing you well and a swift resolution to the "mobile account" issue in these tricky times.

Jun 9, 2021 11:46 AM in response to swapnil239

Swap!!! You da man!! Thanks so much

Jun 11, 2021 10:52 AM in response to swapnil239

This worked great for me but for those of you who try it, it's a workaround and not a solution. In reference to Apple's Directory Utility Support Site, setting passinterval to 0 will disable automatically changing the mobile user's account password to match AD's. When the user changes their domain account password, they will need to go into their keychain and change it to match the new one in AD.

Jun 28, 2021 11:18 AM in response to godihateitunes

Yes, Admin account and VPN connecton is required if you are working from home. Even user password is required to create new account.
Rename user profile from /Users/username to /Users/usernameX
delete user account from SystemPref > Users& Groups
Run below commands using terminal
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileaccount -n username
dscacheutil -q user -a name username
sudo dsconfigad -passinterval 0
Login
Enter user
Password
this will create new user account
after this we need to restore user profile
/Users/username to /Users/username_Del
& then /Users/usernameX to /Users/username

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"Your account is locked" msg after Big Sur upgrade