[iChelle]

Hi all
I thought I'd give it a shot here since the folks at Apple aren't much help right now.

Here's the deal. My boyfriend's G5 tower at work has a user profile set so when he boots up, he gets to a login screen and can't get to the desktop; this computer belonged to someone else. He is wondering how to reset this password.

I was told that he should boot up from the install cd holding down the "C" key and he should get to a screen where he can reset the password. However, he did just that but still defaulted to the login screen. What is he doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,
M

Edit: Sigh. Sorry, spoke too soon. He booted with a darn G3 CD. G3!?!?! He doesn't have the original G5 install CD. Is that something that can be asked for at the Apple store?

[Blasphemy]

boot from an installation cd by holding down the c key as soon as your computer begins booting

if he's doing it correctly, it will boot into the installation interface

click the menu bar items. One of them should have the choice 'reset password'

[Gossamer]

If you can't get into the installation screen (should ask you want language you want it in first) then upon booting, hold down the 'option' key. It should give you a choice of where to start from. If the CD is in there it should show up after a few seconds. Click the arrow to boot once you've clicked on the CD as the source. If that doesn't work try a different CD/DVD.

[dimmer]

A G3 era OS X CD will most likely not be bootable on a G5: but he can get around this by using single user mode and terminal -- a check on Apple's support site should provide the required information.

[Warhaven]

It's kind of tricky, but if you can bear with me I'll list the steps for you. Before you start, jot down the name of the admin account with which you don't have the password for.

Boot into Single User mode as suggested by dimmer by holding down the command+s keys during boot. You'll pop into the command line. Once there, type in the following:

1) /sbin/mount -wu /
2) /sbin/SystemStarter
3) niutil -list . /users

After step 3, you'll get a list of users. The admin account you're looking for will have a UID of 501+. If it's the only account on there, it's probably 501; but the UID doesn't really matter, it's the shortname you're after. I just wanted to give you a point of reference for when scrolling through the list. FYI, if the admin's name was John Smith, the short name is usually something like johnsmith, so look for something similar to the admin's name in the 500 range.

Once you have the shortname, you just type: passwd shortname

Where shortname is obviously the shortname you just grabbed. It'll ask you for the new password, and then retype the password. When you're done with that, type "shutodown -r" to restart your computer.

Once you're back at the login screen, select the admin account you didn't have a password for before, and use the new password you just gave it. Once you've logged in, you can create your own admin account, log into that one, and then delete the old one.

You should be good to go, and congratulations on pwning your first computer.