Developer Preview 2 install wants "Setup User" password

First off, you're right, DP2 has to be installed before DP3.

Do you remember if one of the updates you did before the DP2 update that you left to last was a FirmwareUpdate?

I've been using Macs a lot for quite a few years now, but I've not come across what you're describing.

Can you boot into Safe Mode (hold the Shift key immediately after switching on the Mac and keep holding it until you see a progress bar)

Can you boot into Recovery Mode (likewise but with cmd + R)?

Also, exactly what do you see on the screen that seems to be asking you for the password for "Setup User"? And again for when you enter a password and it doesn't accept it?

There wasn't a firmware update. What would I do in Safe or Recovery modes? I've never seen them.

John

From Recovery Mode, you can re-install 10.11 over itself (no loss of user data), which can work as a way of fixing a botched update.

Safe Mode is more of a diagnostic. It doesn't load any kexts or drivers other than those essential to the basic OS.

The screen layout is:

Background is a rich royal blue. There's a basic clock display (just HH:MM) in white in the top right corner. There is no menu bar, or anything like it.

The following elements are all horizontally centered:

A circular icon, in a much paler blue, containing a silhouette, in the same blue as the background, of a stylised head and shoulders, seemingly indicating that a person is the subject of the screen. That's at about 3/8 of the way down the screen from the top.

The text "Setup User", without those quotes, a little way below the icon.

A mid-blue text entry field, with rounded corners, with an (->) icon to its right, looking much like the password entry box on an OS X login screen. This is shortly below the "Setup User" text. The prompt text in it is white and says "Enter Password". There's a text entry cursor at the start of the field. If I type into this field, it behaves like a password entry field, displaying blobs rather than characters. If I press Enter or click the (->) icon, the box and icon shake from side to side, just like an OS X login screen.

Near the bottom of the screen, there's a smaller circular icon with with an X in it, "(X)" and the text just below it "Cancel". If I click that, the screen goes black, and pressing a key brings me back to this blue screen.

John

Thank you for the detailed description.

Because of the username "Setup User" I wasn't 100% sure there hadn't been some confusion as to the purpose of the screen, but I now recognise, as you already did, that there seems to be some sort of ghost account.

I'm a bit baffled to be honest. You could try the default Apple system password of "alpine" (normally not "Alpine", but worth trying both).

Another diagnostic question. What do you see before the blue password screen? I'm interested to know because if the blue screen appears before the OS X kernel and GUI components are loaded then it suggests that the drive is locked. This can be confirmed with attempts to enter Safe Mode and Recovery Mode as above.

Turning it off and starting up in Safe Mode got me to a login screen. I was able to log in as the local administrator. It than displayed a black screen with the Apple logo in white and a progress bar that isn't visibly moving. Possibly the OS is continuing to install itself?

I think I'd better give the safe mode (see above) some time before I do anything else. Does that make sense to you?

Yes, it may be continuing to install, or it may be continuing to boot into Safe Mode.

You'll know if it's the latter, because functionality is very limited. If so, can you can confirm the OS X version number?

Apple Icon > About this Mac > Click on 10.11 under "El Capitan"

or sw_vers -buildVersion if you prefer the command line.

20 minutes later, the progress bar might have moved a pixel or two, but no more (I stuck a post-it on the screen so as to be sure). The screen is black apart from the Apple logo and the progress bar. I think it did log into Safe Mode: I got a brief sight of the desktop.

Worth giving it a bit longer (I'm never sure myself in these cases whether or not observer bias is causing me to believe there's been a couple of pixels worth of movement or if there is actually still something going on other than a crash or loop 🙂)

The only place I've seen a blue screen asking for a password before is when someone (normally the systems admin for an employee's laptop) had locked the internal drive before releasing it. This shouldn't cause an obstacle to OS X updates - it's meant to prevent the drive being accessible if the Mac is put into Target mode (cmd + T) so that its internal drive becomes an external drive for any other computer it's attached to. I know your system admin has no knowledge of that but perhaps the context I just mentioned will jog his memory.

I'll give it overnight (I'm in England, and it''s evening here). How does one lock or unlock a drive? I'm pretty sure we have never done this deliberately, but if it's as easy as a cmd-keystroke, it could have happened accidently.

thanks,

John

No, it requires more intentionality than that (Setting a password too). I'm wondering if your Mac Mini is fairly old because on more recent ones it would be done with FileVault, but that presents somewhat differently to what you're seeing...

I'm in the UK too. I'll only be around tomorrow until early afternoon though. After that I'm afk until Monday.

To clear up a possible confusion, the cmd + T boot option is how to access your internal drive from another computer, not set a password on the drive in the first place.