my child changed password and forgot it

[crown711]

i bought a used g-3 ,w 500 mhz.pro 512mb ram and 40gb hdd for her because she messed up two pc's.i thought that mite help.i just sent out 75$ to jesseknows here on the forum.my lil' girl comes to me and ask me how to reset password i tell her i have no idea!the login and password were changed by her inside the
mac somewhere.is there a way to find it, like you can in A PC ?and if not can a person change the hdd out and go that way?i was told by a freind that you can boot to the install cd for 10.4 and reset it that way.right now i have a big paperweight .
lmk if you can help me.

 

[Injury]

I'm assuming you are running OSX 10.4?

If you are running OSX at all, the easiest thing to do is exactly what your friend said. You will need the install CDs that BEST match your version of OSX and your machine type (ie, prolly can't use disks from an Intel version or a laptop version, can't hurt to ry though). Insert the first install disk, restart your mac and hold Apple + S. A n install dialog will come up up, make sure you don't reinstall, but go to the "utilities" menu up top and there should be an option for password reset or user manager.

Do your thing, then make sure to make a new account with only basic user access and keep the admin account separate.

That should work, but I have some bookmarks at home for doing it other ways if it doesn't.

 

[bearxor]

You absolutely need the install CD's for OS X. Any version would work. I'm guessing it's not running 10.4, probably 10.3. You don't have to hold down ALT + S, just hold down C to boot off the CD/DVD and then click the utilities menu, then the password reset utility.

There are ways to do it throught single-user mode but I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Goosemaster]

heh...smart kid

I should email him a cookie

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: bearxor
You absolutely need the install CD's for OS X. Any version would work. I'm guessing it's not running 10.4, probably 10.3. You don't have to hold down ALT + S, just hold down C to boot off the CD/DVD and then click the utilities menu, then the password reset utility.

There are ways to do it throught single-user mode but I wouldn't recommend it.

Doh... yeah... Apple + S is Single User Mode. Just C is correct.

 

[timswim78]

As everyone said, you will need the disks. Here are good instructions: http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=3853

 

[HermDogg]

Well if you don't have the disks, you could just boot into the apple initial config and create a new user with admin rights

 

[crown711]

this is what a MAC user pointed me to.
reboot into Single User Mode by holding down Command-S when you hear the startup chime. Keep holding the keys down until you see a black screen white white text. Single User Mode loads the kernel of Mac OS X, precious few services, and spawns a shell through wich you can interact with the system.

You now see a terminal prompt ending with #. The '#' is indicitave that you are logged in as root, or the super-user of the machine. root has the ability to alter password information for any user on the system, without prompting for the old password. Before you can use root to change the forgotten password, you need to start enough services to have access to the NetInfo database that stores user information. To do this, type the following:

/sbin/mount -uw /
/sbin/SystemStarter
(..wait for system to load here..)
passwd shortusername
(shortusername is the short name of the account whose password you wish to change)

You will be prompted for a new password twice (the second one is to confirm).

Now that the password has been changed, you can reboot your system to start up normally with either:



i can't seem to use this command right,when i input this using keyboard ,i do something wrong.
are thid first two lines together?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I just boot into single user mode and change it there.

EDIT: And if she's screwing up other systems (Macs are PCs too), don't give her an admin account. Make her user a limited user and create a new admin account that you have the password to.

 

[Injury]

I've heard of about 5 different ways of doing it via single user mode. I've never gotten any of them to work right across all systems.

Google the exact version of 10.4 or whatever you are running with a method for doing it and you should find SOMETHING that works. Do you have a non-admin account that you know the password to? I know a method that works across all systems that can make any user and admin from SUM.

 

[kondspi]

Does anyone have knowledge of whether the method of booting to the install media in order to reset the password will work on a NeXT machine and how to do that?