The first option, if you have access to another mac you can burn a DVD on, is to boot up with a Mac install cd and use an option to reset the password.
I’m preparing two downloads, one is for Intel based macs and the second for older PowerPC versions.
You’ll need something like Utorrent to download the torrent file, get a copy here http://www.utorrent.com/
Download the torrent file that is suitable for your system, you’ll need to fill out a survey to get access to it.
Intel based macs: Download system DVD torrent
PPC based macs: Download system CD torrent
Here instructions on how to use the CD.
- If enabled, please disable firmware password protection. This is disabled by default. For instructions on how to disable firmware password protection, please refer to the FAQ entitled How do I disable Mac OS X Firmware Password Protection?
- Turn on your Mac.
- Load the Mac Install Disk 1 into your CD/DVD drive.
- Restart your Mac. When the startup bell (or custom sound) chimes, hold down the “C” key. The “C” key will prompt your Mac to boot from CD/DVD. Please be patient as it may take your machine a bit longer to boot.
- Step 2 will load the OS X install process. The following step depends upon the version of Mac OS X utilized.
- For Mac OS X Pre-10.4, please navigate to the Installer menu and select the Reset Password option.
- For Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher, please navigate to the Utilities menu and select the Reset Password option.
- This will launch a Reset Password window. This utility will prompt your to select disk/volume and user. Please answer the requests as follows:
- Select the Macintosh OS X disk which contains a password to reset: Click to highlight the icon entitled Macintosh HD.
- Select a user of this volume to reset their password: From the pull-down menu, please select (root).
- Enter the new password for this user: Please enter your new password.
- Reenter the new password for this user: Please reenter the password you entered in the previous step.
- Enter a new password hint for this user (optional): If you so choose, please enter a password hint that only you can decipher. You should not enter your password here.
- Click Save. This will commit your changes and close the Reset Password window.
- Restart your machine and eject the Mac OS X Install Disk.
If you can’t download the CD and burn it then follow these instructions:
The process below will create a new admin account and with that new account you will be able to login into your system.
Before you start this is what you should know about this procedure.
What your about to do is delete a folder called AppleSetupDone.
By removing this folder it will fool the system into thinking it has not yet completed the setup of creating a new user, so after the reset it will start asking you for your details, just like as if its the first time its running.
Will you loose you files? To avoid confict you should create a unique account and not one of the same name as the system had previously.
Once the new account has been created to get to the documents you have to goto the users folder and change permissions of the folder to get acess to it.
Ive only tested this using Mac OSX, i would assume it would work on any hardware thats running OSX.
Here goes, first you need to enter terminal mode
1. Reboot
2. Hold apple key (or command) + s key down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line)
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account.
As not to loose files the new admin account must be a new name and not one previously used. I’ve only tested this on osX.
Heres a Youtube video that shows you all the steps in action, please leave a comment and give it a ‘Like’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfSFA61M3go
Once you are logged in, you might want to get access to your old admin accounts file
I’ve created another video showing you how to do this.