Change Admin Password

Okay, so for some reason you don't have the password to your computer. Hmmm, why would that be? Maybe, you got real drunk one night and changed the password, or you're and distrustful spouse/partner that wants to see what his/her significant has on their computer. What ever the reason, there a few things you can do.

If you have your start-up disk or know the password to one of your admin accounts then you are good to go. Visit this site. They have the steps to changing your password.

But what if you don't have the start-up disk, or you don't have another admin account on the computer that you can access. As you may find, you cannot simply add another account through the interface or via terminal.

So what do I do?

While visiting kioskea.net, I found a nifty trick, and it worked like a charm on my OSX 10.6.

Here is how to 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 or change the password.

Now that is it... I do not advise you to do this, but if for some reason you are in a pinch, you may want to use this trick. Although, I did use this trick, I advise you to use caution as I cannot guarantee the results.