Oh dear, sound like you've made a mess of it.

You could try booting into single user mode. I think you hold down the 's' key at boot-time.

However, if you've done too much damage that might not buy you much and you'd be better off biting the bullet and starting from scratch again.

Do a search on this site for tips on how to correctly enable root on OS X via netinfomanager.

Good luck.

i've got a similar problem that might be related. on a fresh install of X, on a separate hard drive that was erased by the installer, i can do everything *but* login as an administrator to make system preference changes. some preferences, like Startup Disk, don't even let me try to login as an admin - the button is grey. for others, like Network, when i login, it never completes autentication. if i enter a bad password, it says it's bad. if i enter the right password, it just gets stuck authenticating.

any ideas?

If you boot from the install disk, you can choose "reset password" and it will give you a list of users, including the "root user". This should solve your problem.

The root account has to be activated before you can use it. Run Netinfo Manager from the Utilities menu. Choose Domain->Security->Authenticate from the drop-down menu. Then choose Enable Root User from the same menu.

I totally misread the original post. Do the CD thing :)

I've done the same thing. The CD thing doesn't work because "root" doesn't show up as a user. I'm looking into the single-user option, but I haven't found concrete instructions on what to do when I get there.

Well, I got my root user back by setting up another OS X machine the same way I configured mine, then exporting the NetInfoManager info. to a ZIP and importing it on the original (previously messed up) machine. I guess if anyone else has this problem, I could set them up as a user on this extra machine, then export and email them the resulting file (you would of course want to delete me as a user so I couldn't hack into your system) LOL.

Chris

Pull up your terminal window, and use the "sudo" command. ie: sudo passwd xxx
where "xxx" is your desired password. you can then use that password to step into superuser mode.
you can also use the sudo to run apps / commands from your normal user login that can normally only be run from root.