Loss of admin on Mirrored G4

S

sirharper

Registered
I have a mirrored G4 here that someone has gone into Netinfo and basicly ruined. The problem is this...

No valid admin account remains
Lack of ability to activate and use root account

This presents many problems most significantly is the lack of ability to change startup disk thus the ability to boot off of the 10.2 CD.

This machine also lacks the ability to start in single user mode also as all boot-time key commands are ignored.

Any suggestions?
 
ALL boot time key commands are ignored? As far as I know those key commands are read in and processed by the open firmware before the machine even looks at software on the disks. Try completely powering off the machine, holding down the ALT key on your keyboard then turning it on and do not let go of ALT until the "bong" sound is finished playing. This should scan all available boot options (cd, disk drives, netboot) and may take a few minutes, but it should present you with a menu of what you can boot from. There is a reset admin password option I believe right on the file menu in the OS X installer if you boot off the CD.. so if you can get that far you should be ok. As a last resort, you might want to try poking around in Open Firmware (which again is a boot key combo, alt+apple+o+f keys at once). There is a guide to it here: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1061.html
but bear in mind its not for the faint of heart and you do risk messing things up more if you don't pay attention to what you're doing. It is possible however boot from a specific device from an open firmware command line, I did have to do it once for a sort of similar sounding problem... but do not remember exact syntax so you'll need to do some reading. If you can't even get to the open firmware menu then like I said either you have a keyboard problem or something is really really broken and will probably require service. Good luck!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top