Chosen Solution
I replaced my dead late 2011 logic board with used mid-2012. Now I can’t log in, I’m assuming because the serials are different. It says: “You are unable to log in to the user account ‘UserName’ at this time. Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred.” The internet tells me changing my serial is close to impossible and I can’t seem to find out if reinstalling OS X will make a difference in this situation. Is there a way to still make use of all my apps and software even though they are linked to my old serial? I backed up a day or two before the board died (just had a bad feeling… I’m glad I did!) What do I do to make use of this very lovely screen saver machine?
Sounds to me like this logic board us linked to another user via iCloud. It may be a pull from a stolen machine. What was your part source?
The OS would not normally be linked to your serial number, so I would not expect this to be the situation. Do you happen to have FileValue enabled (encryption)? What indications were you getting that the board was going bad? Is it possible that you aren’t typing the password that you think you are, and have a bad key from liquid damage? I would type the password in a visible space just to verify. I would boot the laptop from an external bootable volume, which will allow you to see your internal drive as a secondary drive and get at your data, etc. You can do this by connecting an external drive and powering on with the option key held down, which will display the boot options…I would be curious to see if you do get the boot options and not a padlock (which indicates a firmware lock on the new board). Boards with firmware locks can behave in strange ways, so I would want to rule that out. Another idea is to follow these instructions and create a new admin account: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/432…
