The Computer

Its working, but it wasn't for 3 days at first and I was going nuts.   There is bad news at first, but good news at the end, so keep reading.  

It arrived last week.  I made sure my Time Machine backup had the latest version of the old computer.  Went through the migration process.  Answered all the questions along the way.  Recorded all information it suggested.  It took 9 hours.

Migration is supposed to retain all settings.  For the most part, it did, but for some things it did not.

When the migration process was ended, it said to restart the computer.  That made sense, restart incorporates the old into the new.

When it came back up, it wanted my admin password.  I know my admin password.  But it wouldn't accept it.  I struggled with that the entire next day.  No luck.  The new computer software wouldn't recognize me.  

Hooking my old computer back up, I researched "recover admin password".  By design for security, that is not easy to do, but I did find some instructions about it.  Sadly, none of them made much sense to me (too technical and in terms I didn't understand).  I mean, seriously, "kernal panic"?

I set up the new computer again and tried to follow the recovery instructions.  No luck

I tried sleeping the computer, I tried restarting it, I even unplugged the router to reset it after 2 minutes.  Nothing helped.

I set up the old computer again (which, perversely, seemed to be working fine and made sure I had a new backup.  I disconnected it and set up the new one.  I erased the internal hard drive.  I reinstalled the backup.  No luck.  The new computer would simply not accept my admin password.

I shut it down again.  Let's just say "bad words abounded in the house...

The next day, I started it up again to try and do "safe recovery mode" and other things recommended.  But I tried the same old admin password again first (why not?) and it was accepted!  I have no idea why it was now and not before.

But the new computer is working.  It's not perfect.  I lost all autofills, but I will restore them gradually.  Good news is that it hasn't auto-restarted.  It doesn't get hot in sleep mode.  It wakes up immediately.  It seems to send and receive quickly.  All my bookmarks, files, email and photos are present.  

Time to see if I can FINALLY be able to leave comments on blogs again.  That is the last test and something I have missed doing.