Password remover for mac?

Banzai_Joe · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:50

Hi all,
one of our subsidiary companies has gone through and i've had to retreive the I.T. kit.
Amongst it all is an iMac7,1 which dual boots into either OS10.5.2 or XP Pro.
Now, to cut a long story short, the original user of the mac side (who is long gone) had set a password that no one knows (because the recent users only used the windows side). Without the password i can't update the OS or make system changes.

Is there anything i can do to get round this, the way @Active PasswordChange works for windows?

Thanks for any help offered.

PardonTheWait · 7 Apr 2011 at 17:26

On the install disk, when you boot from it, there's a 'reset password' utility. It's in the Utilities menu on the top bar on the installer

MuGeN · 7 Apr 2011 at 18:51

Really? hows that secure?

Serenityxo · 7 Apr 2011 at 19:07

Can also delete the keychain file, providing you can log in.

@MuGeN, this is why you're 'supposed' to use the vault, if you change the password using these methods the sparse image with all your stuff in will become corrupt so to speak. You cannot access it again.

Banzai_Joe · 8 Apr 2011 at 07:55

Hi, forgot to mention, there are no OSX disks to be found at all.
I found a method on youtube that explains holding down cmd+s at startup to take to you a command prompt screen where you type some stuff in and it creates a new admin account.
However, i can't even get that command line screen up, presumably because its a dual boot system. If i press the alt key at bootup it gives me the option of launching MacOs or Windows.
It would be no real biggie to get a new MacOs disk and reformat (if i can't use that disk to change the password), but we'd really like to keep the windows partition as it has cad software on that again we don't have the disks for any more.
The dual boot was creaetd with bootcamp.

Any more advice please?

MacRS4 · 8 Apr 2011 at 11:32

Start up disks is the easiest way from what you say. I take it you don't have the admin passwords to the Windows partition either? I don't know if this would help on the Windows partition, never tried it on my Mac.

Ref the security bit, it's interesting how many people think that putting a password on a machine makes it secure even in the event of somebody physically having their hands on it. It doesn't, not in any way.

Even brute force - pop the drive out, stick it in a caddy, straight in with no worries at all.

Banzai_Joe · 8 Apr 2011 at 12:05

Got no issues with the windows partition, as that's all they used to use. Hence the long lost mac admin password, as the user left years ago.
I need to be able to keep to windows install as is, so i think i'll need to get mac install disks to change/wipeout the password or install a new admin account.

PardonTheWait · 10 Apr 2011 at 13:37

MuGeN said:
Really? hows that secure?

It won't unlock the keychain, so doesn't unlock all your passwords and so on.

I also don't believe it works with anything but a proper system disk for that machine specifically but I'm not certain.

You can also stop a Mac from letting you use boot modifiers - which would stop anyone being able to reset the password. Got to be careful with that though. Either way theres ways to get around the not being 'secure'.

NickK · 10 Apr 2011 at 20:35

No system is secure - only security is having levels of security that it becomes unfeasible..

wilko49 · 14 Apr 2011 at 04:27

Having dual-boot shouldn't stop the single-user mode shortcut from working (that's the command-s you mentioned). Having an EFI password, however, would do this, although I thought this would also block the boot manager (option on startup). You can test this by trying to boot from any bootable disc (burn a linux distro, if you have nothing handy) - don't forget to hold c. If that works fine, just zap the PRAM and try booting into single-user mode again (that's command-option-p-r at startup).