HT2643 I have this beautiful iMac, bought in 2002, but have had it in storage 10 years. Just got it out and it started like a charm, but needs a password, long forgotten! How do I get in!

Question

First time using "communities"! Will add some colour to the question. Within a year of buying this iMac, I moved to London and have only just returned, 10 years later. At my age, I am lucky to remember a password for a month! No way that I remember it from 10 years ago! I have the serial number (of course), but none of the original cd's with instructions, etc. How do I get a new password to permit me access to the computer?  Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Did you follow all the instructions in Step 3, in particular locating the old user?
If it's still not available maybe the following will locate it and the data.
Get free OmniDiskSweeper and run as root. (The link is to earlier versions; you will need to locate the one that's suitable for the OS version you are running. To see that, click on the   > About this Mac.) Open Terminal in Utilities and copy/paste and hit return. Give your admin pword when requested, which won't appear as you type it in. You will also get a scary warning about using sudo; keep going. Hit return again. running as root will allow you to look into other users.
sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper
Be very careful when running as root not to delete anything. root gives you elevated privileges and you can do some severe damage if you start removing things without knowing what you're doing. I take it you just want to look around to see where things are, so that shouldn't be an issue.
Btw, after all that time, I seriously doubt the PRAM battery is still good. That battery, also known as the clock battery, maintains power in the Paramater RAM, which stores some settings including the date and time. If the clock is off, or perhaps some other settings, this may lead to some issues and should be replaced when you can.
EDIT: I don't think you will be able to run OmniDisk after all. The earliest OS it can be installed to is Tiger 10.4, which you probably don't have. But who knows, give it a try anyway.