How to recover Admin password ?

[AlexLaforge]

How to recover Admin password ?

I am performing some maintenance and updates on a Friend MacBook Pro 2010.
It's on Mavericks 10.9.5, so I need to update it. Among other things, I need to install some utilities (Carbon Copy Cloner, etc.)

The strange thing is that its main User Account is Admin, and does not require any password to open a session.
But when installing some programs, OSX keeps asking for the Admin password.
My friend obviously does not remember having set any password.

I know that I could reset it from the Recovery mode or Terminal, but it then would screw the Keychain, because the Keychain would still use the old "unknown" password.

So is there a way to recover the Admin password in any way, including bruteforce in the worst case ?

There is no filevault nor firmware password.
I really would like to avoid recreating a new keychain, or worst, reinstalling the whole OS.

Thank you for your assistance and ideas,

 

[avz]

Erase and reinstall. If you can randomly “recover” an admin password, there is no point in having it in the first place. Auto login is probably on, but for everything else you’ll need a password.

 

[Snowlover]

How to recover Admin password ?

I am performing some maintenance and updates on a Friend MacBook Pro 2010.
It's on Mavericks 10.9.5, so I need to update it. Among other things, I need to install some utilities (Carbon Copy Cloner, etc.)

The strange thing is that its main User Account is Admin, and does not require any password to open a session.
But when installing some programs, OSX keeps asking for the Admin password.
My friend obviously does not remember having set any password.

I know that I could reset it from the Recovery mode or Terminal, but it then would screw the Keychain, because the Keychain would still use the old "unknown" password.

So is there a way to recover the Admin password in any way, including bruteforce in the worst case ?

There is no filevault nor firmware password.
I really would like to avoid recreating a new keychain, or worst, reinstalling the whole OS.

Thank you for your assistance and ideas,

Try going to users & groups in system preferences and reset the password (= creating a password when it was left blank on initial set up).
I set up my mac without a password and found that it needed one for program installation etc. Did the above and all good.