Help me, I am desperate, and my job is on the line

[Directed]

So I have 2 400 MHZ Imacs that are blue and have over 256 MB of ram and 8 gig hard drives. They both have OS 10.2 and have admin passwords set up. The problem is that the admin password is unknown by anybody. I promise I have nothing to do with making that stupid of a mistake. The guy who did that has been fired for incompetence, and now I must fix this. I have no install disks for the computers, but I just bought OS 10.3. I tried upgrading them (and succeeded on one of them), but the admin password is not reset. How do I reformat the hard drive on this damn Imacs? There is no option to do it, and apparently I can't do a fresh install of OS 10.3, only an upgrade or reinstall, as it senses there is another operating system. I hate macs at this point.

The other problem is the other mac, when I attempted to upgrade it, doesn't recognize its own hard drive to upgrade, even though it boots to that hard drive just fine. This makes it so I have no idea how to eject the damn OS 10.3 install disk one, which supposedly has a utility on it to reset the admin password. But since I can't eject it because I don't know how to eject a cd from an IMAC without having the operating system boot, I can't try that either.

All I know Is I am totally screwed, and I don't want to have to tear a whole Imac apart to remove a cd and put it in another and try the admin reset utility which is somewhere I have no idea where, and start all this damn nonsense all over. Can anyone help me or give me suggestions that may resolve this dilemma?

[locust]

Holding down the mouse button while booting will hopefully eject the disc.

The partition tool is "Disk Utility." There's an "Open Disk Utility" somewhere in the installer's menu bar. In here you'll be able to repartition, format etc.

I don't know any specifics of resetting the admin password off the top of my head, but I know there are ways.

(I vaguely recall some sort of "reset password" in the menus on the 10.4 installer CD, but I don't think it's on earlier versions. My guess would be that you'll end up booting into single user mode and resetting the password from there.. Google should be able to tell you how, whatever the method is).

[Directed]

Ok, so this is what I did. holding down the mouse button, didn't get the disk out. So I took the damn thing apart, took the cd player apart, took out my disk, put it in the other mac and reset the admin password (upgrading it didn't reset it for whatever reason). So I have one working mac. I still don't know why I can't recognize the root (hard drive) drive when trying to upgrade or install OS 10.3 to the OS 10.2 machine. I am leaning towards it having a bad hard drive even thought this makes no sense. What a pain in the ass. At least my job is no longer on the line as with one mac apart in pieces I somehow look like I know what I'm doing. I told them I took one apart to make the other work (which it works now). No reason to tell them the exact reasons, seeing as I am not sure myself.

But honestly, how screwed up is this? Now I have a couple of others that are erroring out before they boot. Hopefully from the 3 I have not working, I can make 1 or 2 more work. We'll see. Mac hardware sucks to trouble-shoot. I hate my life right now.

[Arcane1]

BWAHA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!

The PC Gods are laughing at you Directed. Laughing their fucking asses off so hard that the one in charge of Memory glitches just shat his toga.

PC guys should NEver fuck with MACS unless they have prepared themselves properly, which you obviously did not. The first step is to reverse the Right and Left sides of your brain, the second step is to cut off the middle finger of your Right hand to supress mouse clicking urges. After that you must burn an original DOS floppy disk and a Windows XP CD-ROM in the full light of the moon while kissing an image of Job(s).

Shy of following those steps, I would hire a fruit specialist before the Gods decide to smite you.

[jammin]

If you put a paperclip in the far right of the slot-loading drive the DVD will eject.

When you're in the OS X installer, click 'Tools' > 'Disk Utility' and write 0s to the drive. You'll then be able to perform a clean install.

Hope this helps.

[Directed]

BWAHA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!

The PC Gods are laughing at you Directed. Laughing their fucking asses off so hard that the one in charge of Memory glitches just shat his toga.

PC guys should NEver fuck with MACS unless they have prepared themselves properly, which you obviously did not. The first step is to reverse the Right and Left sides of your brain, the second step is to cut off the middle finger of your Right hand to supress mouse clicking urges. After that you must burn an original DOS floppy disk and a Windows XP CD-ROM in the full light of the moon while kissing an image of Job(s).

Shy of following those steps, I would hire a fruit specialist before the Gods decide to smite you.

The damn client sprung them on me last minute. To add insult to injury these are older 400 MHZ ones and they take FOREVER to boot. I am sufficiently strong in the ways of the mac to handle many situations. But give me a break, they don't even know their own admin passwords. Fortunately these people are being charged an arm and a leg for being pains in my butt. It will end up having been cheaper for them if they just bought some new macs. I told them this, but they have no budget for new computers, but plenty of budget for computer support. WTF!!! Hell if you have money you must pay it might as well be to me I guess.

Plus they had no install disks. What a fruity place LOL.

[Arcane1]

The damn client sprung them on me last minute. To add insult to injury these are older 400 MHZ ones and they take FOREVER to boot. I am sufficiently strong in the ways of the mac to handle many situations. But give me a break, they don't even know their own admin passwords. Fortunately these people are being charged an arm and a leg for being pains in my butt. It will end up having been cheaper for them if they just bought some new macs. I told them this, but they have no budget for new computers, but plenty of budget for computer support. WTF!!! Hell if you have money you must pay it might as well be to me I guess.

Plus they had no install disks. What a fruity place LOL.
Seriously, pullout the HDs and reformat them. A SCSI PCMCIA adapter in your laptop or take them off site for a quickie on a workstation. Then load them fresh.

Quit Fing around with them.

[Directed]

Seriously, pullout the HDs and reformat them. A SCSI PCMCIA adapter in your laptop or take them off site for a quickie on a workstation. Then load them fresh.

Quit Fing around with them.


This is now done. But man is it a bitch to yank a HD out of an I mac. Especially if you want to avoid giving it cosmetic damage.

[Xenex]

Mac OS X: Changing or resetting an account password (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106156)

Resetting the original administrator account password

1) Start up from a Mac OS X Install CD (one whose version is closest the the version of Mac OS X installed). You should first disable Open Firmware password protection, if it is enabled. Hold the C key as the computer starts.

2) Choose Reset Password from the Installer menu (or Utilities menu in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger). Tip: If you don't see this menu or menu choice, you're probably not started from the CD yet.

3) Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume.

4) Set the user name of your original administrator account.

Important: Do not select "System Administrator (root)". This is actually a reference to the root user. Do not confuse it with a normal administrator account.

http://www.info.apple.com/images/kbase/106156/106156_2.jpg

5) Enter a new password.

6) Click Save.

[Xenex]

The other problem is the other mac, when I attempted to upgrade it, doesn't recognize its own hard drive to upgrade, even though it boots to that hard drive just fine. This makes it so I have no idea how to eject the damn OS 10.3 install disk one, which supposedly has a utility on it to reset the admin password. But since I can't eject it because I don't know how to eject a cd from an IMAC without having the operating system boot, I can't try that either.

First, to force the Mac to eject the disc just start the computer while holding down the mouse button. It should just spit it out.

As far as not installing, I think this article may explain the problem (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106235):

"On the listed computers, Mac OS X must be installed on a volume that is contained entirely within the first 8 GB of its ATA hard disk. You may partition your hard disk to facilitate installation."

Basically, a bunch of older Macs (listed in that article) need OS X installed in the first 8GB of the disk... or it won't install. Try making a partition, and see if installing works...

Let us know how it goes! :)

[Xenex]

...although, reading again they were 400MHz iMacs, and already have 10.2 installed. Probably not the problem.

All well. Following Jammin's advice and just reformat it!

[rascuache]

If in Doubt Erase!

Boot each from the Install Disc and WIPE the fuckers.
You dont need and admin password when booting from the CD.
I have done this several times with my macs and have not had a problem

BTW 400Mhz Imacs...Old! Buying an eMac would be cheaper than repairing them!

[d3kst3r]

Let me get this straight: you can't log in because you forgot both passwords? Only solution I can think of now is to replace the hard drives thus getting clean new logins and operating systems. And send a nasty looking mafia henchmen to the house of the guy who did this.

[Directed]

Let me get this straight: you can't log in because you forgot both passwords? Only solution I can think of now is to replace the hard drives thus getting clean new logins and operating systems. And send a nasty looking mafia henchmen to the house of the guy who did this.

Believe, me I am seriously considering it. I have a few pics of what I had to do, i may post them later