HT1752 I have forgotten my admin password and need to create another user

Question

I have forgotten my admin password and need to create another user. Have no disks to boot from!!

Answer 1

You need an installer disc in order to reset an admin password. I don't know if the following will work on your system, but give it a try:
You can also reset the password by printing out (or writing down) and carefully following these steps.
First, find the short name of the admin user on the machine. The easiest way of doing this is by looking at what their directory is called in the Users folder.
Now, start up the computer while holding down Cmd-S. It should boot into a command line. (If it doesn't, you may need to reset the firmware password, which is detailed elsewhere.)
Type these exact lines:
mount -uw /
ifconfig lo0 up
cd /var/db/netinfo
netinfod -s local
Now you'll need that short name. (You did write it down, didn't you?) Type "passwd", a space, and the short name of the admin. For example, if the admin was - rather prosaically - called "admin", you'd type "passwd admin".
The computer will now prompt you to change the password for "admin" (or whatever the short name was). Go ahead and type a new password.
Now, type:
sync
reboot
and the machine will reboot. The admin password should now be changed.