Won't accept administrator's name and password

hi there,
I just bought an imac 20 inch. Now it started up all good then I installed leopard and all seemed well, until I tried to software update. It asked for Admin name and password. I provided these and it just said 'You need to type an administrator's name and password to update', as if I didn't type anything at all.
Now I know my admin and password I am typing are correct as I can log out and on. So my next step was to re-install, but then I cannot do this without typing in admin and password which it just acts as if I don't write anything. I then tried to do the original disks holding 'c' then go to the password changer in 'utilities'...but wouldn't you know it it just crashes every time I open!
I am stuck and very frustrated... any help would be appreciated. I saw similar topics posted but none that really fit...please help. Thanks.....
PS- leopard kept on freezing on installation.

This same problem happened to me, all the sudden one day my mac decided to revert to the original standard root username and password which I obviously did not know. In order to change this:
1) Activate single user mode on reboot as by pressing cmd + s as your computer starts up. Make sure you do it right away, and keep the keys pressed down.
2) Where the cursor pops up, type exactly
/sbin/mount - uw/
3) When the next cursor pops up type exactly
passwd
4) Then you can type any password you want (now changing the root password to be what you want)
Note you will not be able to see what you type, but the text is being recognized
5)The computer asks for you to retype the password, retype it
6) Type reboot
Once the computer restarts you can navigate to system preferences>accounts> and then unlock the account (lock is located on the bottom left corner) using Username: root and the password you just set. Henceforth, you can appoint your account as the administrator. Hope it works!
PS- Google is a wondrous troubleshooting tool everyone!!! (Have posted this response to many posts already)

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