Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

xsmi123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 30, 2016
134
50
Sylvania, OH
I have inherited a Power Mac G5 from a storage closet at the school where I teach. However, the machine has an admin password on it that no one knows and there are no recovery disks for it. How would I go about resetting the password?
 
Seconded. Thanks @eyoungren - if I'd known of this trick, it would've saved me considerable grief over the years, including a recent situation with a faulty optical drive and an inability to boot via USB. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren
Seconded. Thanks @eyoungren - if I'd known of this trick, it would've saved me considerable grief over the years, including a recent situation with a faulty optical drive and an inability to boot via USB. :)
Well…I didn't know about it myself until an hour and a half ago. I was going to post some stuff about downloading an installer and then booting from it to reset the password when I just decided to do a Google search. That's the first link that came up.

So, I cannot claim credit for any of the knowledge it shares.
 
IMO it is wise to completely wipe (secure erase) the hard drive of any used system you acquire. This is to ensure you know the state of the system and that there aren't any nasty surprises hiding on the drive.
 
IMO it is wise to completely wipe (secure erase) the hard drive of any used system you acquire. This is to ensure you know the state of the system and that there aren't any nasty surprises hiding on the drive.

True, You never know.

In that case, you could download a Tiger or leopard image off of macintoshgarden and install a fresh copy yourself.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.