Power Book G4 10.4 to leopard 10.5 help!

[/UserName]

Hello!

I have a Powerbook G4 running 10.4 and the disk for 10.5 to upgrade. I need some help with pre-instilation advice.

This laptop was originally used under two admin accounts, I want to premaritally remove one of them and keep the other. However we no longer have the password for the account I want to get rid of.
I know I could do a clean installation but I would lose a lot of programs I want to carry over which we no longer have the disks for, there are no files that need to be backed up (I already moved and deleted every thing I wanted) I only want to keep the programs such as office, photoshop, illustrator ect.

So my question is:
Is there away to by pass the admin password to delete the user account?
What is the best way to instal 10.5 without losing the programs?

Thank you for your time!
/U

 

[Fishrrman]

Do you have another Mac available?
Does the PowerBook g4 have a firewire port?
Can you connect it to another Mac using firewire target disk mode?

If the answer to the above questions is "yes", I would try doing that, and then...

I would delete the home folder for the account you want to get rid of.

Another way, a better one, I believe:

I would do a complete backup of the PBg4 to an external drive using CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

At this point, while still booted from the internal drive, I'd delete the unwanted account folder FROM THE CLONED BACKUP.

Then, I'd boot from the cloned backup drive...
Re-initialize the internal drive...
Do a "clean install" of 10.5...
...and when prompted, migrate the apps, data, and remaining account(s) from the cloned backup.

When done, you should have a fresh copy of 10.5 on the internal drive, along with all your apps, data and account(s), EXCEPT the account you previously deleted...

 

[/UserName]

I would do a complete backup of the PBg4 to an external drive using CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

At this point, while still booted from the internal drive, I'd delete the unwanted account folder FROM THE CLONED BACKUP.

Then, I'd boot from the cloned backup drive...
Re-initialize the internal drive...
Do a "clean install" of 10.5...
...and when prompted, migrate the apps, data, and remaining account(s) from the cloned backup.

When done, you should have a fresh copy of 10.5 on the internal drive, along with all your apps, data and account(s), EXCEPT the account you previously deleted...

Thank you very much it worked wonderfully!