Keychain suddenly prompting for password after running Keychain First Aid?

B

brianlees

Registered
After I ran Keychain First Aid, my keychain is now prompting me to unlock it. Prior to this, I was never prompted. I'm guessing the problem is my account on my computer does not have a password assigned to it.

I did this once before with Keychain First Aid and the same problem occurred (but I promptly forgot about it until I shot myself in the foot again). It is obvious that Keychain First Aid caused the problem when it thought it was fixing the keychain.

Now, I get bugged with a stupid unlock dialog. How can I correct this?
 
Go to Utilities>Keychain. You want to click on the pad lock. You will be asked for your password. You may need to click on the Always Allow button. Once you have done this, the Keychain will be unlocked. It should not ask you for the password again when Keychain is needed.
 
That setting is in place.

Let me explain it better:

Joined: May, 2004
Posts: 11
When the account was originally created on this Mac, it was created without a password. Therefore, the keychain was also created without a password. So, the two were in sync. After I ran Keychain First Aid, I am now prompted to unlick the keychain when I login in, which never happened before.

I'm guessing that the stupid First Aid program "fixed" my keychain, it must have put a "password" in their that is "blank". When prompted to unlock the keychain, I don't have to enter a password at all.

I just want to "reset" my keychain to automatically open. It is obvious that Apple has not taken into account blank passwords with Keychain First Aid. I have many friends and family that have MacOS X computers....all of which have no passwords since they are home users and don't travel with them. It is a very common thing.
 
A blank password may be common to you, but is not recommended. You already have a password - it's just 'blank' and you will find fewer problems if you assign a 'real' password. Give yourself an actual password. It's not for security (at least in your case) but simply to provide a full permissions variable for your system. You will find that some system updates do not function reliably when using a 'blank' password.
Go into your 'Accounts' preference pane, and change the password. You'll see a message that informs you that your Keychain password has also been reset. If you must, then change the password back to 'blank' (not recommended, but works) and you'll see the Keychain password has been reset again.
Then LOCK the keychain, through the Keychain Access utility.
Restart your system, then repair permissions through Disk Utility, then restart again, and then UNLOCK your keychain.
That should stop the message asking to unlock (system may again ask once or twice. If so, be sure to click on Always Allow, then should cease asking)

If you have automatic login turned on, you will seldom need to enter your password, with the exception of installing most software.
 
Thanks for the help. This looks very promising. However, I changed my password, as suggested. When I go to change it back, it says that I can't change it to the blank password because it was too short. It does not allow me to proceed.

Any ideas now?
 
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