Well I got a free iBook G3 for fixing the bottom of a chair… Its pretty much perfect for me, it has Office and Firefox so I am set to jet.
BUT
The guy that gave it to me got it from his father who can’t remember what his administrator password was (he used it for his graphic design business). We called him up, he thought it was some sort of cussword but we didn’t crack it. Without that password, I can’t update any of the software on it like Java and the like. And he looked around for the OS install CD, but couldn’t find it.
I have been told that if I go into single user mode I can delete the file that OSX creates when the initial setup is complete, and when I reboot it will push me though that process again and I can set up another administrator account and have it auto-login to that account so I can update my junk in peace without cracking random cussword character strings.
I can follow the steps on finding and deleting the file okay, as I work in non-GUI environments for a living, but I can’t get this damn thing to go into this single user mode. I have followed the instructions for booting it this way by holding down the cloverleaf+S but it doesn’t respond to the command, it just boots normally. I am assuming that there is a boot sequence thing that it has and there is a setting preventing it from this.
I don’t know what it is though. My Mac experience so far was getting it to go wireless and hitting YouTube and watching a Bruce Springsteen concert, drinking beer, and fiddling about with it to get the CD drive to open which I was successful at doing.
Any suggestions? Is there a better way to do what I am trying to do? I promise the thing isn’t stolen or anything, I deleted all of his business Quicken files while I was talking to the old geezer on the phone.
Thanks,
First question, does this machine have an Open Firmware password? if you hold down the Option key at boot, do you see a padlock icon, or does it show a pushbutton for each mountable drive?
if it’s the padlock, you’re hosed, once an OF password has been set, you MUST know it to remove it, if you forget, the only thing you can do is replace the logic board
if it boots to the pushbutton interface (Boot Manager) there is no OF password
if you have a current OS X install disc, put the disc in the drive, reboot, and hold down the letter “C” to boot off the optical drive, when you get to the “choose language” screen, choose your language, on the next screen, go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and choose the “Reset Password” option, when the program opens, select your hard drive, then select the username you want to reset, and enter the new password you want to use, you don’t need to enter the old password
It doesn’t do dick or show anything different when it is booting. I have tried to boot it into save mode, it just flat out doesn’t respond. It is getting information from the keyboard because it makes the little clicking nose if I am holding something invalid like the ‘h’ key while it is booting…
Will it work without the original install disc? Does OS X have the ability to retain what is loaded on there (Office, which I can’t really afford to replace right now) or will it wipe it clean with the install?
I just updated an old PowerBook to Leopard, and it was flawless. Compared to a Windows upgrade, it was startlingly easy. All of the existing applications including Office stayed intact and behaved as if I’d done nothing unusual. Apple-provided apps like Mail did go through an easy-peasy first-time use process to find my old mail and accounts so I didn’t have to re-configure anything other than the password for my home wifi network.