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phobos · Jun 17, 2004, 04:35 AM

Hello people.
I'm trying to help a friend who has a problem with his computer or to be more precise with his brain... He has forgotten his password and now he can't login. He doesn't use his computer (my old computer) frequently so I guess that's the source of the problem. The difficult thing is that he doesn't know a lot about computers and I'm not there to help him. (I'm in UK he is in Greece). He doesn't want to reinstall the whole os because he doesn't want to lose his data and he wants to avoid the hassle to reinstall all the installed programs. The only thing that I thought would be useful was to transfer all his data to another mac through firewire or to clone his hard disk to another mac. But the problem is that I'm the only mac user he knows and I'm a couple of miles away...
So is there anyway he can login to the computer? Or create a new user? Or something???
Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance!!

iNeusch · Jun 17, 2004, 04:49 AM

Boot from the MacOSX install CD and select "reset password" from the menu

phobos · Jun 17, 2004, 05:10 AM

WOW!! Thanks I didn't know that. I just checked it out and you're right!!!Cool!!
Now that I think about it it's not so cool...
Everyone who has a osX cd can actually mess up your computer...
Anyway.
Thanks for the fast reply!!

Developer · Jun 17, 2004, 05:24 AM

Originally posted by phobos:
Everyone who has a osX cd can actually mess up your computer...

Well, you would also need your computer to mess up your computer. If you don't want that you have to use FileVault.

Angus_D · Jun 17, 2004, 05:32 AM

Originally posted by phobos:
WOW!! Thanks I didn't know that. I just checked it out and you're right!!!Cool!!
Now that I think about it it's not so cool...
Everyone who has a osX cd can actually mess up your computer...

*sigh* If someone has unsupervised physical access to your computer then all bets are off anyway. They should also just reboot into single-user mode, which would get them a root shell, then just use nicl -raw or similar to fiddle with your NetInfo database.

To prevent people from booting off CDs and into single-user mode, etc, use Open Firmware Password. Note that if you forget your password to this, it's tricker to reset (you'll have to open up your computer and jiggle some of the stuff around).

iNeusch · Jun 17, 2004, 06:35 AM

Originally posted by phobos:
WOW!! Thanks I didn't know that. I just checked it out and you're right!!!Cool!!
Now that I think about it it's not so cool...
Everyone who has a osX cd can actually mess up your computer...
Anyway.
Thanks for the fast reply!!

If you can touch the computer... the data is not safe

phobos · Jun 17, 2004, 01:08 PM

Hey Angus nice tip with the nicl!!! I'm gonna try it out when I go home. I checked the commands I don't really understand what do they mean, but I'm tempted to try it out. Hope I don't mess anything....

iNeusch · Jun 18, 2004, 02:33 AM

Originally posted by phobos:
Hey Angus nice tip with the nicl!!! I'm gonna try it out when I go home. I checked the commands I don't really understand what do they mean, but I'm tempted to try it out. Hope I don't mess anything....

Usually you can trust people around here... no one would want to hurt you or you computer. But you must be carefull with Unix commands, you can break a lot of stuff...

phobos · Jun 18, 2004, 01:53 PM

Well I guess I'm not good at the unix command line...
I tried 2 or 3 of the commands that man (I mean the command..) says but no luck...
Any clues??

Oh by the way.. My friend has successfully changed his password...
Now to my other question?? How can I hack my computer??? Muhahahahaha???