Mac Forum / General / General / August 2007

Boot from the installation CD (or DVD if it uses that instead)

There should be a menu entry for enabling the root account.

Then reboot from the disk and log into the "root" account

Now you can use System Preferences -> Accounts to set the password
for any account on the system.

Now you can use Applications -> Utilities -> Netinfo Manager
Click on padlock in lower left hand corner (assuming it is in the
locked position), and enter the password.  Now you can disable the
'root' account using the
Netinfo Manager -> Security -> Disable root user

If you do not have an installation CD (DVD), then you can boot
into Unix Single User Mode

   o  Boot holding Command-S
   o  Once you have the command prompt
           mount -u /
      this will make the boot disk writable
   o  Now enter the following command to set the password
           passwd username_you_want_to_give_a_new_password
      or specify nothing and this will give 'root' a
      valid password and allow you to log into the
      'root' account.
   o  Now exit from single user mode
           exit
      The system will not continue booting.
   o  Log into the account you gave a new password.

                                       Bob Harris