[HM] Password help & Jaguar

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:28:58 -0700, Jack Honeycutt wrote:

>Hello....
>
>My girlfriend got a G4 from her X husband in her divorce.  She she asked me 
>to hook up & get running for her.
>When I boot, I get a screen that says the name of her X husband, and then 
>it asks for  a password.  Needless to say, he says he has "forgotten" it.
>
>I know in PCs, you can sometimes remove a jumper on the motherboard to 
>reset the password.  I don't know how it  works in Jaguar or Apples.  I 
>would like to tell you which version of  Jaguar it has running, but I can't 
>get pass the password screen.
>
>Short of booting to her original jaguar disks, and loading OSX again, do I 
>have any way to get to the desktop?  She has files she would like to keep 
>if I can save them for her.
>
>Any advice appreciated.
>
>Thanks in advance.

Sorry, Jack I don't think there is a way in. But there is one thing to try.

Boot from an OS X install CD. I think there is some way to enable root on
the system. If root has never before been enabled, then it won't have a
password and you can set the password to whatever you want. Once the
password is set, you can change the password of the existing account. 

Be warned that some of this will likely require the use of the Terminal
and the command line.

The catch is I don't know the details of enabling root from the Install
CD. I could be completely wrong. I've never done it. I only remember
reading something about it. Some google searches or possibly some
searches on Mac OS X Hints <http://www.macosxhints.com/> would be helpful

Please let us know what you find out.

 ...Duane