Bought a mac mini off ebay and seller sent it w/o pw..

[rltrdc]

It has an admin account that is pw protected.. is there anything I can do w/o the password? Seems like I will need the pw to do it from the OS.. Honestly it's not a huge deal to me as I want to swap a SSD for the HDD it has in it if I can make a boot disk.. I was reading though some documentation on apple's website but wasn't sure which step to take. It seems like I might need a bootable installer.. that seems a little complicated I used to do that on PC's back in the day but have never on a mac and I didn't see guidance on which Mac OS I should download it seems to just say I should download the right os..

The mac mini is a A1347 late 2011 I think.

 

[Ingenioutors]

Just create a bootable usb using various guides online for the latest Compatible macOS for that mini and reinstall the entire OS.

 

[Weaselboy]

Locked out of settings? Here's how to change the admin password if you've forgotten it

Here's how to change the admin password on your Mac if you've forgotten it and can't make system changes. Here we have three reset or recovery methods.

www.macworld.co.uk

Follow the steps in this article under the section "Recent admin password via Recovery mode".

That said, it is a good idea to format the drive and start with a fresh install on a used Mac like that. Your Mac Mini should have Internet recovery, so you can just command-option-r boot to that and erase the drive and reinstall.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Can you try this?
(try it RIGHT NOW)
- Power down, all the way off
- Press the power on button, and IMMEDIATELY hold down "command-OPTION-R"
- If you are using wifi, you may need your wifi password
- Next, you should see the spinning globe (internet recovery) -- warning, it will take a while to load
- If internet recovery is successful, you should get to the "utilities" page.

Can you get this far?
If so, use disk utility to ERASE the internal drive, then use the OS installer to install a completely fresh copy of the OS onto the drive.
Then... set it up like you would a new Mac...