[papworth]

recently i made a clone of my 12" PB HD to an external drive to allow me to perform some checks on some faulty batteries - checking if it was the batteries or the OS (suggestion of Mac Genius at my local apple store).
All was well with the restored HD on my PB until i put it to sleep. The system froze when i tapped a key to wake it up. After a forced restart i reached the login panel am now refused entry, no matter what i type.
i have used the install disk to try to reset the admin password but there is now user account available on the drive.

Any ideas?

[CharlesS]

If all else fails, you could go zap the NetInfo database and run the Setup Assistant again. To do this, start up into Single-User Mode by holding down the Command and S keys at startup. Then, type the following commands:

fsck
mount -uw /
cd /var/db
mv netinfo netinfo.bak
rm .AppleSetupDone
reboot

This should get you to the Setup Assistant, where you can create a new admin account.

[Big Mac]

Is it wrong just to remove rm .AppleSetupDone without touching netinfo?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Is it wrong just to remove rm .AppleSetupDone without touching netinfo?

Dunno, I didn't try it. I'm not sure if the Setup Assistant would notice there was already an existing NetInfo database and just use that or not. I do know that if you move it, then Setup Assistant will definitely have to make a new one. And since we want to make a new NetInfo database from scratch anyway, it won't hurt.

[papworth]

thanks for the thoughts,
in the end i just made a fresh install and have copied across all my stuff from my backup. so far no problems all behaving normally.
Thanks again.

[Chuckit]

Simply removing the .AppleSetupDone file will cause the initial setup dialogs to appear the next time you start the computer and allow you to create a new admin, but it won't otherwise touch anything on your system.