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i'm stuck! can't restore on admin-locked-down MBA, no password

D

dave22r

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 19, 2008
57
0
Middle of nowhere, MO
bought an 11 inch macbook air yesterday, the mom locked down kid's account and forgot her password. so the only access i have to the system is on an account that i can't get into the system preferences or really do anything.

so my question- how do i restore this thing?

i have an external dvd. stuck a snow leopard dvd in there, restarted, held C, then tried D, tapped C, tapped D, then held or tapped the other 24 letters in the alphabet. i can't get to disk utility. not sure where to go next...
 
But doesn't the MBA have Lion? You should be able to do Restart and then CMD + R to enable internet recover.
 
Don't buy computers without user account credential.

You might be buying something stolen.
 
Ok, here's one way to take care of this:

Get your hands on a Snow Leopard instal disk. Hopefully one came with the computer you bought. If no,t borrow one, grab one off ebay of by any other means.

Find a USB optical drive. Boot from the DVD by connecting the optical drive, inserting disk and booting the MBA while holding down the C key.
Once booted, as soon as you get to a step in the process where you see a menu bar at the top of the screen, you can select "Utilities" and there should be a password reset function there.

Also, getting a Snow Leopard DVD and a usb optical drive is kinda a pain in the ass so maybe the 1st thing you should do is contact an apple store and see if they can just take care of it for you. It really only takes a few minutes.
 
I have a snow leopard DVD and an external drive. Booted holding C with it plugged in, unplugged, no dice. Just tried holding command. Then command C just for the fun of it.

Every time I did any of this it goes straight to the login screen. Still scratching my head!!
 
What about booting from a USB drive? Then you could access the internal drive and be able to reinstall from the DVD.

That is assuming you have a USB drive that is a clone of a system drive you can access the admin stuff on.
 
C is to boot from a CD. neither that or option yielding any results. i'm making a lion USB flash drive now. had to find the one system in my house w/o lion on it and is eligible for the download and it's in work!!!

hoping that will work :)
 
think its best taking it to an Apple store to be honest. get a genius to fix this issue.
 
Sounds like the firmware password is set.
You'll need to Google how to bypass that.

Edit: if you can. The only ways I know require the battery and RAM to come out. Removing the RAM is obviously a problem in the MBA.
 
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