"click the lock to make changes" not working

Hi Kaiserludi,

I haven't encountered this error before, but it may be related to Keychain. Try running Keychain First-Aid or:

1. Open Keychain Access, which is in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
2. From the Keychain Access menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click General, then click Reset My Default Keychain.
4. Authenticate with your account login password.
5. Quit Keychain Access.
6. Restart your computer.

Max.

Hi Max.

I am afraid that resetting the default keychain did not make any difference.

The next thing to try might be reinstalling Beta 8 over itself. You can do this with just the delta (which is what the App Store already did) in the hopes of "2nd time lucky" or you could reinstall the full El Capitan Beta 8 over itself by downloading it from https://developer.apple.com/osx/download/. Clicking on the download link there may give you a new code that you can redeem to download the full installer from the App Store - you will need to hold alt/option while you click on the Purchases tab if it doesn't give you a new code.

I have already started it in recovery mode and did a full reinstall, but that did not help either.

That would have re-installed Beta 7. Did the lock function properly before you updated back to Beta 8?

I think that updated directly to Beta 8, not Beta 7. At least I am on Beta 8 now and can't remember doing another Appstore update after the reinstall from recovery mode.

As far as I remember I have directly updated from 10.10 to 10.11 Beta 8 (I did not update to 10.11 before last week), so I can't say, if it would have worked with prior beta versions of 10.11.

Depending on your settings, updates can occur overnight automatically. Anyway, another diagnostic is to test the behaviour of the SysPref lock in a temporary new account. I.e. create a temporary new admin account from System Preferences > Users & Groups > Open Padlock > + button, log into the new account and test...

I have deactivated automatic updates in my settings, so the system does not update without me being aware of it.

I would love to create a new admin account, but for that I would need to be able to open that padlock in "Users and Groups" and if I could do that, then we would not have this conversation in the first place. So, sorry, but I am afraid that I can't do that :-(

Yes, of course, d'oh! 😀

There is a workaround though - you can use Single User Mode to create a new admin user: Hold down Command + s while turning your Mac back on to boot into Single User Mode. Once you get to the command prompt carefully type in the following:

• /sbin/mount -uw /
• rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
• reboot

Your Mac will restart and display the Welcome to Mac screen. Follow the step-by-step guide to create your new admin user account.Once you finish creating the account, your Mac will log you in with the new account.

Your current user account won't be affected of course.

With your workaround I could successfully create a new local admin account (after removwing the '/' at the end of "rm /var/db/.applesetupdone/"), but unfortunately that new local admin account still has the same problem with the padlocks not opening.

Good catch, I don't know what that was doing there - It's gone now 🙂

The thing is that you have really covered all the bases at this point. If it had worked on the new account then forcing a rebuild of the SysPref container would have fixed the issue on your old one. You've run Keychain first aid as per my suggestion above and also reset to default keychain, which covers the authenication side of things. You've completely reinstalled the whole OS via Recovery Mode, ruling out a bad permission or corrupt system file.

So I'm pretty much out of suggestions at this point. It's likely that a complete erase+reinstall would fix the issue since this hasn't been an issue for others but that leaves you having to setup your account using a partial restore from a TM backup using Migration Assistant, which may be more labour that you are prepared to put into the problem. If you do though, just migrate your User account (complete with downloads, documents, etc. folders) and perhaps your apps. Leave "Other Files and Folders" and "Preferences" unmigrated.

D'oh! Even that isn't possible.
In the Introduction window of MigrationAssistant I get asked for my password, when I click on the "Continue" button, my password gets accepted and nothing happens. When I click on "Continue" again, I get asked for my password again and so on. So this is basically the same problem as with the locks, so I assume this problem isn't related to the padlock, but rather to the password input box.

Just so I'm clear - You made a TM backup, erased your drive and reinstalled 10.11 from scratch before trying Migration Assistant?

No, I tried to start migration assistant to transfer information from this Mac before erasing it. I can't use Time Machine as I would have to open the padlock in Time Machine.