Wierdness: old password still working... any ideas?

[Westside guy]

Hi,

I had my Powerbook in for service recently. Since they'd asked for my account password, I decided to change it once I got my Powerbook back.

Well to make a long story short, after changing it I accidentally typed my old password - and it still worked (as did the new one). I can use both to log in, to unlock the screen after sleep, to get at my keychain...

So I decided to try changing it a third time. The new password works, and the ORIGINAL password still works! Password #2 does NOT work.

I did a search of Apples knowledgebase which turned up one article that had a heading which seemed like it should answer my question, but the actual article was totally irrelevant (it was talking about root versus administrator accounts).

I am currently running Panther 10.3.1, with the root account disabled as per the default. I don't have a master password set, and I'm not using filevault.

Thanks to anyone who can shed light on this!!

[Kwyjibo]

sounds like a panther thing but i'm not sure , hopefully somoene knows how t ofix without a re-install, i bet you somhow set a master password tho ..

[Powerbook G5]

Not sure if it'd help or not, but try starting up with the OS X CD to clear and reset your password. Perhaps that'd wipe the first one out for good.

[Westside guy]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Not sure if it'd help or not, but try starting up with the OS X CD to clear and reset your password. Perhaps that'd wipe the first one out for good.

Hey - that did it! Thanks.

I'd STILL like to know what the heck was going on there, though. That's not something that would even be possible in, say, Linux - those places where OS X is way different are the places where I tend to feel like a true n00b. :-)

So... if anyone has any insight into how OS X could keep track of more than one password that would work for a given user (I'm the only user), I'd appreciate hearing about it!

[Powerbook G5]

I'm glad to hear that it worked. That was really odd, I never heard of an old password being recognized after being changed, but at least you finally got it wiped clean.