Can't Login

[bjlatt]

I recently acquired an IMac G3. This unit has the previous owner's login information in place, however, they do not know their password, nor is there a system disk available. Is there any workaround to be able to access this computer?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Nope... if there were an easy way to circumvent an unknown password, then that sure would be crappy security!

Short answer is that you either need to know the password, or have a system disk that you can boot from to reset the password.

[bjlatt]

Thanks for you reply. This system belonged to a friend's mother, so I guess I will hope her memory gets restored or try to find a system disk.

[bjlatt]

Thanks for your reply. This system belonged to a friend's mother, so I guess I will hope her memory gets restored or try to find a system disk.

[ex2bot]

You can buy 10.3 ("Panther) for about $30 online, I believe. It's very nice and $30 isn't bad, IMHO.

Doug

[galaxyruin]

Be careful with this.

There are two parts to this, if you have access to the terminal prompt on another user, skip step 1.

Step 1

Single-User Mode
Another interesting modification to the startup process is booting into single-user mode. Holding down Command+S will start Mac OS X in single-user mode, allowing an administrator to directly access the system through a command-line interface. This is a last-resort method of booting your computer that should be used only if absolutely necessary.

Single-user mode boots in a text-only fashion, just like the verbose startup mode. The process finishes by dropping the user to a shell:

Caution

Be aware that the single-user mode command prompt carries with it full root access. This is not a place for playing games or learning Unix.


Step 2

http://www.intelliot.com/blog/archiv...omment-page-3/