Big Sur beta - Unable to enter my password when asked for it in System Preferences

I just reset my smc which re-enabled my Touch ID and allowed me to use it instead of the password. Somewhat of a workaround.

Having the same issue but on a macmini.

Same here, also cannot unlock the user and accounts preference pane. Filing bug report. Will have to revert to Catalina.

Having the same problem. I am using a 2019 16'' MacBook Pro.

What luke240 said worked perfectly, here is a link to reset your SMC https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201295

I think this is less of a workaround and more-so it will just fix whatever isn't right, as it's now fixed all my issues I was having with the update.

Thank you @luke240 and @dustinrouillard, I used the control-option-shift, wait 7 seconds and hit the power button trick and that worked. I'll update my feedback. It isn't just the System Prefs that get messed up by this either. There are some other cases where MacOS was asking for my password and that was failing.

Resetting the SMC, as recommended by @luke240, worked and now all the preferences tabs and safari passwords can be unlocked again.

I can confirm this worked for me as well on an iMac Pro (2017). I shutdown, unplugged the system for 15 secs and powered back on after 5 secs and all is well. Thanks to @luke240 and others for verification on this.

Also having this issue after restoring from a Time Machine backup on my 15" 2018 MBP.
Resetting the SMC to re-enable TouchID worked and I can unlock the preference panes with TouchID, but not my password.

DIAGNOSED AND SOLVED. The reason this happens, is that somehow both Catalina and Big Sur, were somehow changing administrator users, so that they no longer had administrator level clearance. You would end up with not a single administrator on your computer. I tried every solution out there, but they were all useless, until this one. In my case, my internal drive is named "Macintosh HD." If yours is named something else, put that name in where I have written "Macintosh HD," in the following terminal command.

First step. Reboot into Recovery mode, by holding down the Command and R keys. You'll see the four options. Instead go up to the menu and go to terminal.

In terminal type the following (be sure and type a space after rm)

rm “/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.applesetupdone.”

then type reboot

You will then be able to create a new user and then enable your existing account to be able to administer the computer. This works.

The first time I tried it, after I picked the names and passwords, it said "creating profile." It ran for a couple of hours, without doing anything. I just did a hard reboot and tried it again. This time it worked.

So the issue was happening on Beta and still is on 11.0.1
Only way to resolve the issue was definitely to use the command rm “/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.applesetupdone.” in recovery.
New account is working perfectly fine but when trying to reset other admins accounts, error!
Other admins also don't allow their own deletion.
Activated ROOT and attempted from ROOT both change password and delete the old accounts, same issue.

Any suggestions, beside erase and reinstall...

In terminal type the following (be sure and type a space after rm)
rm “/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.applesetupdone.”
then type reboot
You will then be able to create a new user and then enable your existing account to be able to administer the computer. This works.

FYI, I found that the period at the end, before the closing quotation mark, has to be removed for this to work properly. Otherwise, I get file/directory not found error.

I fixed it in a different way...
This one is interesting. I was really ****** about this issue. However, my resolve was way simpler. I followed the instructions here and it still didn't work. I noticed that something weird happens with the username. When you create an account, for example John Doe (the account creation prompts for a full name), the username/password prompt after upgrading to BigSur will auto-populate the username for you based on whose logged in. It will populate the user John Doe just like that in the username field. When you just change the username from John Doe to johndoe (no spaces) the password works. I am ashamed to even say how much time I spent on this issue before doing exactly this. This worked for me. Maybe it's a one off fix for me, but still an underlying issue. Hope this helps someone.

Just upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur which is not longer on beta and this issue is still happening. It also doesn't accept my fingerprint :).... I tried deleting that file. Rebooted, had me go through all the primary screens and create a new account and.... it still doesn't work....

None of the posted fixes have worked for me. Has there been any update to this issue?