Old Mac needs to bypass security program

MDLarson

MDLarson

Registered
A fella over at SysOpt.com has posted an appeal for help with a Mac he got at a library. He wants to wipe the hard drive clean and perform a clean install, but he has 2 problems: he has no Mac OS install CD and the computer is loaded with a password-protected program that he cannot get past. The library was no help with providing a password. Any ideas?

Here's the original thread and I have instructed him to come here for any help...
 
Well, the advice he's gotten there seems OK - he'll need to get an install CD and boot off that, and do a fresh installation.

The question is, what sort of CD? We don't know, and apparently neither does he, what sort of Mac he has. If it's something that will support a recent OS X release, he should just be able to walk into any computer store and buy it.

If not, I guess he'll need to look for OS 9 CDs. Someone suggested eBay, that seems reasonable.

We also don't know if he is able to boot from the CD - i.e. if the password protection is on the open firmware, or just the software on there. Sounds like the latter, so it should be no problem to just wipe the drive and start over. If it is the former, I guess the easiest would probably be to pull the hard drive, put it in another Mac, and install the OS on it there.
 
First off, what kind of Macintosh is it?? It's possible that this is an Old World machine that won't handle OS X speedily. If that's the case, he might want to look at Linux for the machine. I am using Debian "sid" PPC on my StarMax...160 MHz, 96 MB RAM, and it's holding it's own. There is finally a wiki on the Ubuntu website on getting Ubuntu Linux installed on Old World Macs, so that might also be an option that's more user-friendly than Debian.

Here's the link...
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/InstallOnOldWorldMacs
 
If it's an open-firmware password, then he's gonna have to either remove the PRAM battery for an extended period of time (24 hours, maybe?) or add or remove a stick of RAM. AFAIK, that's the only way around the open-firmware password problem -- and I would recommend the removal/addition of RAM to get around it.
 
If it is a software security password, that company can provide a generic password to bypass the lock. Of course it may be for a price.

I had machines donated to the school I work at. They all had password protection and I could not even erase the drive without that dang password. Contacting the donator only gave me more headaches as the person who knew the password quit. The software company was willing to help but at a price. I ended up throwing out the hard drives. :(
 
I love how people come on and ask tech advice without giving model, specs etc. and expect help. its just like people on ebay that don't show real life pics of things and expect to sell them.
 
Depending on the method of pasword protecting the machine, he may never get into it. I had a program on a PowerBook, DiskGuard, and without the password, you couldn't boot from anything.
 
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