Big Sur User Passwords Breaking

[gavin_las]

Hi all,

Is anyone having an issue where some DEP/MDM enrolled devices - even after a successful first login - fail to recognise the user's password next time they log in and/or are prompted to authenticate for any reason?

We are experiencing this issue on M1 MacBook Airs, but don't have any other models to confirm or deny the issue on those. It's occurring on a small percentage of devices, but enough to be a problem worth solving.

Doing a password reset through recovery partition get's the user back in without any issues.

Cheers,
Gavin

[msw]

Sounds very similar to the behavior described here https://appletoolbox.com/cant-enter-your-password-in-macos-big-sur-heres-how-to-fix-it/ which apparently can be resolved with an SMC reset. Hope that helps

[cstewart3g]

We have had this happen on a number of devices post update to Big Sur (or other updates). SMC has resolved each one thus far.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

[gavin_las]

My understanding is there is no SMC on the M1 MacBooks?

[msw]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252114787 This thread would seem to back up your statement. In that case, not sure — SMC reset is the only solution I've seen floating around for this issue, which is confirmed by Apple. However not sure where that leaves you other than the solution you described.

[gavin_las]

Yeah the solution isn't too bad - password reset through the recovery boot.

Was just trying to see if we were breaking something with a process/script here, or if the issue is well-known.

Appreciate the replies so far!

[kgam]

We've had this problem too on several Macs after upgrading to Big Sur. Looks like an identical or similar problem is being fixed in Big Sur 11.2 so we're holding off further upgrades until this is released and tested.

From the 11.2 release notes: "System Preferences may not unlock when entering your administrator password"

[ghart]

I have experienced this myself on Intel MBPs. SMC reset fixes it every time.