How do I recover the administrator or root password on OS X?
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16-10-2019 - |
Question
I received a hand me down white MacBook with 10.4 on it and it automatically logs into a user account that isn't able to change much in the preference pane. How do I recover or change the administrator password?
The original owner told me to try a few passwords, none of which work to get logged in as admin.
Solution
Boot to OS recovery, internet recovery or on older systems, with a Mac OS X DVD, then there's an option to change passwords.
You can follow an how-to here.
OTHER TIPS
Getting admin access without the Setup Utility: another option, for the sake of completeness.
- Boot into single user mode by holding command-S on boot up.
- Enter
/sbin/mount -wu /
when the prompt appears to mount the filesystem - Enter
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
- Enter
reboot
At this point, it should run the colorful little setup utility that ran when the machine was new. This'll create a brand new admin account. This method can be useful if you don't want to mess up any existing accounts on the machine.
Before step 4 you can use the passwd
command to overwrite the current password for any accounts on the mac. The command ls /Users
will show all the user names.
You can reboot into single user mode and change the password of a user with:
passwd [user]
Enter the new password twice and reboot.