Bought a used 2009 mac mini loaded with OS x 10.6.8. I put in a new hard drive. I already had DVD with 10.6. I stuck that in. Had planned to follow that up with installation of 10.7. I must have put the adm/password at the wrong place? New hard drive opens to adm/password and for a while the password worked, allowing me to do anything that didn't require adm/password. In finder there was another adm. name. Now it opens to the opening page adm./password page, but no longer accepts password. None of the usual corrections: cmd./s; cmd/r; c ; or others worked. Held the shutdown button down five seconds, unplugged, et al. I need to wipe hard drive and start over. At this point, the computer comes on at the adm/password page, but password doesn't open it anymore. There must be some way to overcome this, i just don't know how. I've looked everywhere. I'm at wits end. Please help.
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adm/password mix up shut down computer
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Thanks Weaselboy. You are very kind to respond. But I have tried that method before without success. I tried it again after your response. It didn't work. I'd appreciate any further suggestions.
Can you describe or take a photo of the logon screen you see when you boot and upload it so I can see?
Does it look like this?
Weaselboy: Thanks for your continued interest. The screen does not look like the one you present, although I have run across that page twice in my many attempts to open computer. Otherwise there's nothing unusual about the opening page. The computer opens to a gray screen with apple logo. Then it goes to a blue screen with stars. In the middle of that screen is a square. At the top of that square is apple logo, under that "Mac OS 10.6", under that another square with icon and adm name on top. Under that is a white rectangle for password. Under that in a row from left to right: "back", "forgotten password" and "log in", each with a log. If I insert the password, which worked for a while, it violently shakes left to right two or three times and I can go no farther. Anxiously await other suggestions.
If you are getting that grey scene in my screenshot, then the previous owner has placed an EFI (firmware) password on the machine. You can often reset that by temporarily removing a RAM chip.
Can you hold the C key and boot from the Snow Leopard DVD? If so, you can just erase the entire disk with Disk Utility and reinstall to start over. Of course any data on there will be gone.
I've only gotten the lock screen a couple of times. That's not happening now. Holding down C and rebooting goes to open typical opening screen. Neither does rebooting with disk inserted. Say, I'm using a windows keyboard. I'm going to switch that out and see if it makes a difference.