[richard83]

Hello everyone, having a bit of trouble. Am running a powerbook 15" on os x 10.3(ish). the other day I restarted it and would not boot up. Went to grey screen and stuck. After several attempts it asked me for my password. Now I havn't set it up to use the password so this confused me. Upon entering the password which I know to be correct, it would not accept it. I've since found out how to reset the password using the os x install disc. I completed the process and it still will not accept the password. I've tried this now 10 -15 times and it does not work. I am aware that there are different types of password ,I've changed them all as I don't know which is which but still no joy.I have not done any updates or changed any settings so I do not know why this has happened. It might be possible that my friend has okayed a window asking if i'd like to update the os and I know this can affect the password but he won't tell me even if he did! These computers are nothing but grief, really pissing me off now, does anybody know what the problem is, how it's come about or how to rectify it? Any suggestions would be much appreciated?? Sorry to waste your time people. Cheers, Richard.

[JonoMarshall]

You can enable the root user by resetting the root user's password to whatever you like as you did for your initial user above.

Then click "Other" at the OS X login screen and type in "root" as the username and whatever you typed in as your root user password.

Once you're in, setup a new admin user under system preferences and go from there, you shouldn't use the root user for everyday use and you should probably diable the root user once you have a normal account up and running (this can be done using NetInfo Manager under Applications -> Utilities by clicking the Security tab and "Disable root user").

I've never heard of a password reset not working for a particular user though... v. strange.

[richard83]

Thanks, I'll give that a go. Watch this space.

[richard83]

okay, I've started the install with the disc again, gone to reset password, the root password was selected anyway so I've enetered the password twice and saved, exit and restarted. Chosen "root" as username, entered password as before and the box just shakes, still no joy.

[amazing]

do you by any chance have the "num lock" key activated? or caps lock?

[Sherman Homan]

Is your Mac running the same operating system as is on the Installer disk? For example, if you have upgraded to 10.4 and you try to run the 10.2 Installer disk to change the password, it won't work.

[richard83]

I don't think the caps or num lock was on, will check just to be sure, quite unlikely though. I've updated the os once, can't remember which update it was. How would I go about resolving that? It seems like there's no way round it if that's the case, I mean short of reinstalling the whole thing?? It seems strange that there's no way way of telling the system at this point that it's been updated as that then makes the install disk worthless? Thankyou again.