Replying to Resetting Mac Os Passwords?

Resetting iMac Password OS 9.2, no CD
Resetting Mac Os Passwords?

I bought an iMac at a garage sale for my grandkids.
No disc, no applications, nothing...Just the computer.
When I turn it on it seems to boot fine, inits pop up...Then...It asks me for a password. Any recommendations...Or am I out of luck?

-question by Drew

Thanks ruben. I will keep that in mind and look for those "files" in the system folder. Hopefully it will be easy to spot

We try not to wipe everything out and reinstall, but if that's what it comes down to...

On OS 9 you boot from the system CD, so you have a working system environment and complete access to the hard drive. Thereby you can either, wipe everything out, transfer the data away or delete the files that contain the passwords (can't be that hard to find, somewhere in the system folder). I don't remember the exact structure in OS 9 but I'm sure you can delete the users without losing their data.
So get it on, boot from the system CD and work that out :-) There seems to be no easy way.

Yeah, according to the Apple site, using the OS X CD for Mac OS X will allow the user to reset the password. I searched high and low for a similar solution for OS 9 and lower but can't find it.

Don't think it will work with OS 9 CD because the installer (as far as I know) doesn't have that reset password option. I try to avoid the reinstall, even though it's pretty quick because some users want to keep their data. But if that's what it comes down to...

In OS X you do it by booting from system CD right? Did you try doing the same on Mac OS 9? Maybe you can use the System on CD and then the utilites to reset them.. Don't know. If not, then you can still format from system CD.
You boot from CD by holding "c" on startup.

They should have a master password for these iMacs...but I think the user forgot it. Don't know admin password either.

I think I did find out how to reset the password for Mac OS X though. See this link on the Apple site.

Is there a way to do this for OS 8.6, 9.1 and 9.2 also? Can't find them in the apple support site nor during my online searching...

I'm not very familiar with older versions of mac os x but I have had experience with 10.3...Does the mac have a master password set? usually after a couple tries at the admin passwd it will ask you to enter the master password to reset the admin passwd....or.....login as a network admin and change the password or you could use "single-user-boot" using command + s keys at boot up......hopfully that helps...but if it doesn't please be more descriptive of your problem

I think it's multiple user. It's for a classroom. There were other problems that I saw on this machine (slow booting up).

I hate these macs Replaced hard drive and cd drive without any luck booting from CD. I brought it for in-house repair and once again (as I expected), the repair made was a bad contact. Guess it must mean something was loose in there. Reinstalled the whole OS since the user didn't need the data backed up.

Thanks. I will check out the Apple website.

I assume it was the Multiple User Log In? You see pictures and stuff too?
Would suggest that you search the apple.com Support database, it is huge and it will have better solutions than I have. Just for verification: You need the data on the disk, right?

Was wondering how it can be done from Mac OS 8.6 and up. But if you want a specific one, the one I was working on had Mac OS 9.2.2 and at bootup it asked for a username and password.