I had an issue with one of my Intel Macs yesterday: after resetting the admin password, several services kept asking for the Keychain Password. No matter what I typed in, these windows kept coming up, and cancelling out of them didn’t help. MacOS was stuck in an endless loop and seemingly couldn’t be broken.
Here’s how I’ve fixed it:
- ignore all Keychain Password prompts
- use Activity Monitor to force quit the Preferences App
- log out or restart, then log back in
- use “Create new Keychain” in the pop up window
- follow any system admin/iClone password prompts
On this system I didn’t have iClone Keychain enabled, so a new keychain did not interrupt any other devices connected via the same Apple ID. From what I understand, the Keychain Password is usually the same as the admin password, but it can happen that once changes without the other, leading to issues.
Hope this helps anyone running into similar issues.