Quick Scan
Search for a backup to your keychain data. If it's not there, it's time to rebuild it.
Restart you Mac from the system discs to reset an admin password.
Using Full Keyboard Access can get you many of the menu commands and more from your keyboard instead of having to use your mouse.
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Keychain Data, Resetting the Admin Password, and Controlling Menus From the Keyboard
Welcome to My First Mac's Q&A column. It is said that Macs are easier to use, but they are still complex in their own right. Here are a few questions we have received lately from readers like you. Sometimes we reformat the questions for clarity and presentation.
This week we have questions about Keychain data, resetting your admin account, plus using the keyboard to control menus.
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I accidentally deleted my login keychain. How do I get it back? | |
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I'm going to assume that you deleted the entire keychain data file in the keychain access app and I'm going to run with it from there. First we should check if there are any copies of your keychain. If any copies of any keychains reside on your mac you can search for them easily. Type ".keychain" into spotlight to see if you do. If you find the one you've deleted remember the path to the file, go into Keychain Access, click file>import, and select the keychain you want to import. If you can't find your keychain database you'll have to rebuild your database from scratch. In the utility Keychain Access, click file>new keychain and start over from there. |
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How do I reset my forgotten admin password? |
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You'll need your System DVD that came with your computer or OS X upgrade to reset the password. I know, not very secure, is it? Stick in your OS X disc and restart your computer. When the white screen comes up hold down C. Choose reset password from the Installer Menu. Select your OS X hard drive volume. Select the original username (not System Administrator (root)). Enter your new password and click save. Keychain will also need a password change. You can read more about it here: See a complete step by step here: |
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How do you use the keyboard to pull down the menus like I used to do with Windows? | |
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Sorry, there isn't a way to do it just like Windows. The closest built in way to do this is using Accessibility options in the System Preferences. Go to System Preferences>Keyboard & Mouse>Keyboard Shortcuts. From here you can set how to turn on and off full keyboard access. Once set, you can use different key combinations to change the focus on different menus.From here you can also set some application specific shortcuts. It doesn't work across every application, but it's a start. Plus you can use it to shift focus to more than menus. Another option is to use Quicksilver for a keyboard based application launcher (and so much more). Download it here on Version Tracker: The Quicksilver home page is down at the moment, but hopefully it will be back up soon. Launchbar can also help here. See What is So Great About Application Launchers, Anyway? for more info. |
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You can send in your questions via the Contact page or email us at editor[AT]myfirstmac[DOT]com. Because of the volume of email we receive, we can't reply to each and every question personally. We read each question that comes in and reply to the ones that fit the scope of this column. We also save some questions for future columns.
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Your Comments:
For most Macs, I believe that is the default setting. I have an aluminum iMac with the new flat keyboard at home, and for some reason it doesn't work there (I suspect Fn-Control-F2 would work), but the other machines I use work just fine with Control-F2. Use the arrow keys and enter to select what you want.
scralpha
09/12/2007 at 11:30 AM
Adam F
09/12/2007 at 01:30 PM
Michael Mitchell
09/16/2007 at 06:42 PM
Chris K
09/16/2007 at 08:30 PM
Michael Mitchell
09/17/2007 at 09:19 PM