Even the folks at SOS Apple prepared me for the worst. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!ĪTTN: ANYONE SIMPLY WANTING TO CHANGE THE PASSWORD ON THEIR EXISTING COMPUTER WITH ALL THE DATA ON IT: I just did these steps and then had a momentary emotional breakdown when I thought I lost all 232 GB of my original data as I got the Welcome screen only with my wallpaper and finder all gone. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):Ĥ. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.ģ. To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:Ģ. Here is a way to get around not knowing the admin password on Macs. *How to Reset User Password via single user mode* Without the discs, try this (OS 10.5 only). This will let you create a new admin account when you reboot your computer.Īlso, without the discs, look at Mac OS X Tip - No Password, No Root, No CD? No Problem. type without the quotes: 'rm /var/db/.applesetupdone type without the quotes: '/sbin/mount -uaw'Ħ. boot computer and hold the 'apple' key and the 's' key.Ĥ. Here's one method to reset the password without the install disc:ġ.

Reset admin password mac os x 10.5.8