Lost administrator password and installation disk

I never took the time to set up FireVault or time machine on my macbook and always used automatic login when signing in as the administrator and forgot the password. My instellation disk is no where to be found. Is there any way to recover or set up new password for my administator account? Also, when ask for my password, the account just says "Administrator" and not my actual name. Is there anything that can help me keep my files if I do have to restore my laptop and would I need another instellation disk?

Hello,
You're really going to need the installation disk in order to reset your password. A local AASP (Apple Authorized Service Provider) or Apple Retail Store Mac Genius would be able to help you reset it.
To find a local AASP then look here: http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service.html
To search for Apple Retail Stores look here: http://www.apple.com/retail
Derek C.

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Lost Administrative Password and Have to update my flash player. How Can I get around this for updates?

Sure needing help here. I've lost my administrative password on my mac and have to update my adobe flash player. I've researched several, seemingly (to me) complicated ways around this. Does anyone have an easy solution. Really need this back up and running! Thanks in advance.

This password prompt is presented by your operating system, and is intended to keep you from accidentally installing software.
If this is your personal machine and you don't need a password to log into the computer when it first starts up, you can probably leave the password blank and click OK to get past this prompt. If this is your personal machine and your normal password isn't working, check to make sure that CAPS LOCK is off, and type the password carefully.
If this is your work machine and it's asking for an Administrator password, well, you'll need to have a conversation with your friendly IT person.
If you're still stumped, you may need to reset the password on your Mac:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18653
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14325
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201240

I have a IBook G4 10.5.8 with a Forgotton administrative password, and no disk

My Ibook G4 is a version 10.5.8 and I have tryed the command s at the chime with many different passwords, but some how none of them seem to work. I need to do all my updates very soon, or I will no longer be able to go on most websites. I do not have a disk. i know my way around computers but I'm stumped with this one.

You could try calling Apple support to see about getting a nearly impossible to find replacement disc or retail equivalent generic install DVD for Leopard 10.5, for your iBook G4 powerPC computer, and you will need to have the serial number of the computer to tell them when you call. And there would be a fee for the discs. A white-label DVD in 10.4 and 10.5 was said to be available from AppleCare or Apple Support as of last year, for a fee per disc.
contact apple support http://support.apple.com/kb/HE57
The link above to reset password without installer DVD for Snow Leopard 10.6 & before may work. Other items noted are for later intel hardware and software that supersede the rather vintage iBook PPC G4.
Of the iBook G4 that could run Leopard 10.5.8, (processors over 800MHz speed) the last ones shipped with a Tiger 10.4.x on special install-restore disc set, one with applications, the other with the system installer & hardware test. The discs said to be available do not offer the applications usally on the restore disc that were not part of the main OS X set of system applications. For example, AppleWorks may have been included with the iBook G4 in its own Tiger system install set; not in the retail Tiger disc set. A replacement disc set of just the system 10.4 or 10.5 would not include the 'extras from the computer kit' it had when new.
•But you may be able to get a disc. Or at least ask, given info shared in ASC via these two links that does a show & tell (one has images of white-label install discs, the other has other info about them)...
see:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/20995965#20995965
'Restore Tiger 10.4 & Leopard 10.5 DVDs are available from Apple by
calling 800-767-2775 as of January 20, 2013. Collect your Mac's serial
number. Prepare you credit card for a workout. There is a reasonable fee.'
see:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/24379733#24379733
If Apple does not have any system discs to restore or install Leopard 10.5, then you'd be looking at more pedestrian places such as ebay or amazon, or maybe a product specialist who fixes and resells older Mac portables online or in a store, may know.
So you know the need for a system disc that supports the computer would be a necessity to perform routine maintenance repair and restore, and that would be in the form of a DVD. There is no download of the full OS X for these older computers, only step updates; and few sources for the correct disc.
Hopefully this helps...
Good luck & happy computing!
PS: browsers such as TenFourFox, iCab, SeaMonkeyPPC, are available.
What other updates were you needing to find for your 10.5.8 in iBook?
edited 2x

I lost my emac G4 installation disk, how can i get my admin password back?

I lost my emac G4 installation disk, how can i get my admin password back?

Here's one method to reset the password without the install disc:
1. boot computer and hold the "apple" key and the "s" key.
2. wait for terminal show
3. release keys
4. type without the quotes: "/sbin/mount -uaw"
5. press enter
6. type without the quotes: "rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
7. press enter
8. type without the quotes: "reboot"
9. press enter
This will let you create a new admin account when you reboot your computer.
Also, without the discs, look at Mac OS X Tip - No Password, No Root, No CD? No Problem.
http://www.macobserver.com/tip/2003/06/16.1.shtml
Here is a way to get around not knowing the admin password on Macs.
To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:
   1. Reboot
   2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
   3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
          * mount -uw /
          * rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
          * shutdown -h now
   4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!
 Cheers, Tom

How do I re-establish a lost Administrator id and password?

How do I re-establish a lost Administrator id and password?

Forgot Your Account Password
For Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see:
       Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password
       OS X Mountain Lion- Reset a login password,
       OS X Mavericks- Solve password problems,
       OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
For Snow Leopard and earlier with installer DVD
     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password,
     OS X- Changing or resetting an account password (Snow Leopard and earlier).
For Snow Leopard and earlier without installer DVD
    How to reset your Mac OS X password without an installer disc | MacYourself

I lost my administrator password and can not install Mavericks (or any other software for that matter). How can I find my administrator password?

I lost my administrator password and can not install Mavericks, or any other software for that matter. How can I retrieve an administrator password?

Forgot Your Account Password
For Lion/Mountain Lion
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password, OS X Mountain Lion- Reset a login password, and
     OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
For Snow Leopard and earlier with installer DVD
     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password
For Snow Leopard and earlier without installer DVD
    How to reset your Mac OS X password without an installer disc | MacYourself

I did re-set my password and when I click on Install for Mavericks, I still get a box for "administrator password" and it still won't accept my new password. Is there a difference between my Apple ID and the administrator password they're asking for?

I downloaded Mavericks and it won't install. I did re-set my password and when I click on Install for Mavericks, I still get a box for "administrator password" and it still won't accept my new password. Is there a difference between my Apple ID and the administrator password they're asking for? I never had an administrator password-- I just hit enter and have never had a problem before with previous installations. I'm on an iMac, from 2007, running Mt. Lion (version 10.8.5). I've been looking for other's posts who may be having the same problem, but haven't found any. Can anyone help?

Ugh. The 'no password, no work' thing is a recent Apple development. I ran into it on my system and ended up having to do a clean install on a partition I fully erased.
I suppose, if you have the ability to, go online and look up how to burn a bootable DVD image. Download the 10.8.4 image then use the Disk Utility to make a boot image of it. You'll need a dual-layer DVD or a USB drive (or memory stick at least 8GB) If you've got an optical drive, burn the disk, if you've a USB device, use that.
Then get a pocket drive and copy your important files off the system or let Time Machine do a full backup.
When the backup is done, insert the disk and hold down the C key until the machine boots off of the DVD. At the point you get to the start window, go to the menu and choose the Disk Utility.
In the Disk Utility, reformat the drive. You go to the actual DRIVE (not the Macintosh HD, but the root above it that is the actual hard drive device)
I always do this and *partition* it into several volumes, the benefit being, you can store all of your music, documents and importans stuff on that secondary storage volume you make - it will have it's own index and then the first volume is where you put the OS and it will have it's own index as well. That way, if the OS throws a wobbler and you need to reinstall, you don't lose your data.
Depending on the size of your hard drive, it is good to give your OS partition at least 60GB and optimally 100GB, and the rest for storage.
Name your volumes, use the little box sliders to manually size them or put that number in the size window, select for the format, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and hit Apply and then the Disk Utility will quickly create your new partitions.
Once finished, quit the Utility and it will return you to the OS installer. Select the volume you want to install to and it should start up and install.
Once the installation is done, you'll get the new machine startup then you MUST put in a password for the computer. Once you're in, and to the desktop, don't bother with any Mountain Lion updates, go right to the App Store and get the Mavericks update and let it install the app to your Applicaitons folder, then do that install.
On a side note, there MAY be a way to make a disk image from the Mavericks application and avoid the entire Mountain Lion step.. I honestly do not know, but a bit of hitting the search engines may find out if there is. I think that if you looked for "make Mavericks boot disk or boot image' you may find something.
Good luck!

How do you reset or find out your administrator password without a disk? please help!

i have not tried to download anything in a while on my computer and i am trying to upgrade something and it wont let me without my administrator password and i totally forgot it and definitely do not have my DISK that they are saying i need to put in in order to reset it.
i am hoping there is an easier way..... please let me know.

Forgot Your Account Password
For Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see:
       Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password
       OS X Mountain Lion- Reset a login password,
       OS X Mavericks- Solve password problems,
       OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
For Snow Leopard and earlier with installer DVD
     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password,
     OS X- Changing or resetting an account password (Snow Leopard and earlier).
For Snow Leopard and earlier without installer DVD
    How to reset your Mac OS X password without an installer disc | MacYourself
    Reset OS X Password Without an OS X CD — Tech News and Analysis
    How To Create A New Administrator Account - Hack Mac

I have lost the password and the DVD is not working on my old mac G4 500mhz, how can I get back my password?

I have lost my password and the DVD is not working on my old mac desktop G4 500mhz. I have tried use the boot up disk to change the admin password. But the DVD did not work. ( I did not touch this machine for years.) But i need retreive something , so I have tried the shell script in the terminal
1. fsck-y and the mount-uw to try to change and find the service directory's plist to change the password. But after I get the mount -uw, it show illegal option message.
What I can do now to solve this problem? in shell script or any other way?
Thx in advance.
Alfred

Hi,
A DVD drive that is not working after many years not used:
most probably dust on the little laser lens.
Take the drive out and if you can reach this lens: clean it with pure alcohol on Q-Tip.
Many people throw away cd or dvd players all the time because they stopped working, and very often it can easily be fixed by cleaning this lens.
I used to have a G5, where I couldn't access that lens. It was very sensitive to dust.
I have fixed it several times with compressed air. One time I didn't have canned air, but a bikepump did the trick.
If you have another mac, I'd try to access the G4 internal disk with firewire target disk mode.
good luck

I have forgotten my administrator password, and there are no hints. I have a Mac OS X Mavericks. When I get to the reset password screen, it has no hard drive to select. What now?

I have forgotten my administrator password, and there are no hints. I have a Mac OS X Mavericks. When I get to the reset password screen, it has no hard drive to select. What now?

If you're using FileVault, you first have to unlock the startup volume in Disk Utility. Select it and click the Unlock button in the toolbar. Of course, this is only possible if you know another password to unlock the volume. If you don't, follow instead these instructions.

HT201240 I've forgotten my administrator password and can't download software. can anyone advise how to reset a new password without having the original?

I've forgotten my administrator password and can't download software. can anyone advise how to reset a new password without having the original?

Forgot Your Account Password
For Snow Leopard and earlier
     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password
For Lion/Mountain Lion
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password and
     OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
If you are unable to boot from an installer DVD:
(these will only work on Leopard or earlier)
1. Boot to Safe Mode by restarting and after the chime press and hold down
      the COMMAND-S keys until a black screen with white type appears.
2. At the prompt, type the following commands pressing return after each
      command line:
     /sbin/fsck -yf
     If you do not receive a "Filesystem OK" message then repeat this command
     until you do. If after seven tries you still do not receive a "Filesystem OK"
     message, then the system is corrupted and needs to be reinstalled.
     mount -uw /
     cd /private/var/db/netinfo
     mv local.nidb local.old
     rm ../.AppleSetupDone
     shutdown -r now
The second-to-last command above will cause OS X to think that the operating system is newly installed, and when the new owner starts up the computer it will send him/her to the startup wizard where he/she can start a new user without reinstalling.
This last method does not actually change a password. It simply removes the user accounts and lets you create an initial admin account as if the computer were new out of the box.
Reset Admin Password Using The Terminal
You can 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 the directory is called in the Users folder.
Now, start in Single-user Mode. It should boot into a command line.
Enter these exact lines. Press RETURN after each.
mount -uw /
ifconfig lo0 up
cd /var/db/netinfo
netinfod -s local
Now you'll need that short name. Enter "passwd", a space, and the short name of the admin. For example, if the admin was rather prosaically called "imadmin", you would enter "passwd imadmin".
The computer will now prompt you to change the password for "lmadmin" (or whatever the short name was). Go ahead and enter a new password.
Now, enter:
sync
reboot
and the machine will reboot. The admin password should now be changed.

Lost Administrator Password for Securedrive (SafeGuard PrivateDisk)

Hi,
I can't remember my administrator password and therefore cannot "mount" the SafeGuard PrivateDisk encrypted disk.
Is there anyway to reset an admin password for this drive?
If not can I just remove this software?

Hi Richard,

HT202860 Forgot administrator password and unable to download applications. I have my Apple ID but it won't work.

I forgot my administrator password and I am unable to download applications now. In particular I am trying to download Adobe Reader at the moment but my Apple ID is not enough, it is requesting another password. Anybody can help? Thank you

Forgot Your Account Password
For Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see:
       Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password
       OS X Mountain Lion- Reset a login password,
       OS X Mavericks- Solve password problems,
       OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.

I cant change the old icloud mail to a new one because i have lost my password , and when i changed it in ap-id page it still remains the same, nothing changes .

cant change the old icloud mail to a new one because i have lost my password , and when i changed it in ap-id page it still remains the same, nothing changes .
What do do ????

You do not have to call US, but you need to call. Or else.
Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support

So I rebooted my iMac to reset the administrator password and now all of my data is gone. How do I get everything back on my computer?

So I forgot my administrator password and I rebooted my computer to reset it and now everything is gone. How do I get all of my data back? Thanks!

Exactly how did you "reboot to reset"?
Rebooting simply means shutting down the machine and turning it back on. That does not erase any data.

Lost administrator password and installation disk

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