The OS X Keychain keeps on popping up on my Mountain Lion Macbook. As soon as I log into my user/admin account, I'm assaulted by three Keychain prompts, one after the other: • Messages Agent wants to use the 'login' keychain. • Mac OS X wants to use the 'login' keychain. • Google Chrome wants to use the 'login' keychain. To my great misfortune, it is not accepting my User (Admin) password. I have no idea why. When I hit cancel, it cycles through these three prompts.

For instance, opening safari shouldn't make it ask for an admin password. But, that CleanMyMac software is probably making some pretty intensive changes on the system level in order to clean the computer, so I'm not surprised that OSX is asking for your permission.

I don't know if this is a virus, a Mountain Lion bug, or what. I would appreciate it very much if someone could help me solve the issue.

I have only one user account on my computer, it is the Admin account. The other account is the Guest account, which I am writing on currently. My user account is totally hosed.

I can't do anything on it. I can't even reset my keychain.

By 'hosed' I mean I will try to delete my keychain, and I'll type in my password, but the program will just crash. Here are some things I have tried: • Deleting the keychain from user account (program crashed when I tried to reset it) • I tried to delete my User/Admin account (remember, they are the same) but when I went to User Accounts, the 'minus' sign was grayed out: I could add accounts, but I could not remove my Admin account. • I do not have the install disc, so I don't know how to reinstall OS X without it.

Thanks so much. I have never ever experienced this before. Don't know if it's a virus, or what!

I had the same issue, and this is how I fixed it. The essential message by default your Mac OS logon password is the the same as the keychain password. Each time you change your Mac OS logon password your keychain password is automatically changed.

For me, my mistake, I opened the Keychain Access.app which is located in /Applications/Utilities, and within the menu bar under 'Edit' is the option to change your Keychain password. Well, in my case, not knowing that it should remain sync'd with my logon, I attemted to make it, what I thought, was 'more safe' by giving it a different password. The next time I logged on and attempted to use any app which had data stored in the keychain - browsers, messages, the OS compared my logon password and my keychain password and found them not the same. Thus all those pop-up prompts are generated. The URL has the solution.

In short: • Launch Keychain Access • In the upper left corner is a lock, if it is unlocked - good. If it shows locked, click it, and enter the password to unlock the keychain. (you may have to use your old password to unlock it, you may have to cancel one of the symptom pop ups to get the unlock dialog). • On the left side under the heading Keychains, there should be an item named login, click it • From the Edit menu in the menu bar choose 'Change Password for Keychain 'login' • In the window that appears, the 'old' password is the 'current' keychain password' - probably something you changed intentionally and possibly recently. For the 'new' password which must be entered twice, enter the password you use for Mac OS login. This will restore the two to be the same and in sync • Restart your mac; those pop-ups will hopefully stop. Keychain Demystified What is it?

This is a subsystem BUILT-INTO OS X. It cannot be removed. It cannot be disabled. Every time you use a username and password and the app or OS asks you if you want to save this information, it's saved in your login.keychain file. Beyond that, depending on whom you ask the keychain is either. An AES encrypted file with encryption based on the user's current password that saves all sorts of pertinent things like passwords, logins, certificates, and whatever else you want to throw it at.

OR A mysterious female-goddess who laughs at your keening wail of ignorance as you plead with her to no avail. The keychain for each user lives in ~/Library/Keychains/ and the primary one we're looking at is login.keychain The ~ above is UNIX nomenclature that refers to the 'current user's home directory'. So if you were user gschipp, then ~/Library/Keychains/ would mean /Users/gschipp/Library/Keychains/ This can be confusing, since there is a Library folder in the root of the drive. They keychain prompts that pop up are 99% of the time ONLY linked to the current user, and are therefore in their home directory within their Library folder. Why Does It Do Me Like This?

• Check the box next to it. So, you go to the site looking for a solution and end up making the problem worse. However, it’s very important that you don’t just google ‘free Mac antivirus software.’ Many sites that claim to offer free antivirus tools in fact host viruses themselves. How to run a malware scanner on Mac There are several Mac virus scanners that allow you to scan your system. How do you check for viruses on a mac. • Press the Uninstall button.

Your keychain is an encrypted file. It is 'closed' and 'locked' when you're not logged in, but it 'unlocks' and 'opens' automatically when you login, so your applications can ask it cool stuff like, 'what was the password for my AllThingsTchotchke.com account?' As long as you're logging in with the same password it was encrypted with, it'll unlock & open with no issues.