Recent content by Pierce Butler

So - sort of a tools-left-lying-around situation. I don't know of anyone trying to poke into my system, but I agree with the idea of not leaving temptations open. Thanks one more time for getting this problem straightened out! (I should mention, just for the record, that when this non-booting...

Did it, and it's done. Just what unlocked-back-door trouble happens with ordinary computer use and an enabled root user?

I did as you said, everything worked, and now my SL volume is, I think, ready to resume life as a secondary boot volume while I continue adjusting to life under El Capitan. One (hopefully minor) deviation: once rebooted as a (just-plain) Admin, I could see neither the System Administrator user...

Well, didn't get to it until this morning. Booting from the Snow Leopard volume, I saw an "Accounts" panel in System Prefs, which showed me the two "Standard" users I'd had there before. The one I'd logged in as was the only one not grayed out; though the padlock icon was closed, I could and...

I'll have to reboot from that external drive to try out your suggestions, and have some chores to finish first. As for "sysadmin", I admit I was using the term casually, not precisely. More later... (tonight, I hope)!

After a bit to get my nerve up, I proceeded with the update-from-DVD process. It worked as you said - almost. The volume now boots and functions well, except that it no longer recognizes my password (even though it gives the same "hint" as before), and now wants me to enter a sysadmin name...

Running DVD-based installer on an existing boot drive doesn't erase the User folder and accounts?!? Does this provide any advantages over installing Snow Leopard on a new volume, running the relevant updaters, and using Migration Assistant?

To keep using certain legacy software, I've been running my iMac9,1 (mid-2009) computer from an external USB-2 hard drive under MacOSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). All went well until recently, when the volume in question (and a backup on a separate drive) stopped working as a boot disk - it doesn't...

For the record: "Kappy" at discussions.apple.com <a href="https://discussions.apple.com/message/29110817">partially answered my question</a> by pointing out I could restart and hold down the Option key after the chime: this presented a set of potential startup volumes, which did include the...

Yes to both.

Context: ~2008 iMac (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running Snow Leopard (10.6.8). Wanting to experiment with Yosemite, I downloaded the installer and ran it on a copy of my startup HD. Then I rebooted, played around a bit, and restarted from my usual boot drive. Next time I felt like exploring it...