Help with Mac security / wiping hard drive

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I’m round at my step-mums, she bought an iMac from PC World earlier this year.

She got it cheap because it was the display model.

Because it is the display model, it already had a system password set, which after many, many phone calls with PC World, they do not know the password for the machine.

Problem is that we need access to the system settings to change the network settings and update the internet, but without the system pass, we’re screwed, as the settings are locked.

Is there any way to wipe the hard drive and reinstall MacOSX from fresh, without knowing the system password?

Any help would be massively appreciated.

Thanks!

if its not a bios password (requiring a password when starting up from another source) then you can reinstall easily i believe, i never needed a password when i did my reinstall this week.

press cmd + r to go in to restore mode (this might be mac book air only im not sure)

or shift with the lion disk in.

let me know if you have more questions

just googled and found this… for if your confident, as it requires some terminal stuff…

Creating a new Admin on Mac Os X: Here’s how to reset your OS X password without an OS X CD . the Working solution for me was to create a new admin you can create new admin like this by deleting a specific file.

You need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:

1. Reboot 2. Hold apple key + s key down after you hear the chime. (command + s on newer Macs) 3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):

mount -uw / 
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone 
shutdown -h now 

4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and your good to go again!

Thanks @aaranmcguire,

the second solution – is that a no turning back process, or will it simply create a new account?

Right now she can still log in without a password, but it’s the master password we need to change so we can update the sys prefs.

... I don’t want to end up locking her out full stop! he

Thanks again mate.

the 2nd solution will make a new admin account,

then from there you should be able to press the padlock in the preferences and type in the username and password for the new admin account…

just wondering have you got access to an admin account or are you on a normal user, i would of thought you user your using was admin.

if you email me if you have any more problems, aaran.mcguire@cl.vc

no 100% on what i say now but, i would think if it says you are a admin and the password your using is not working then PC world has done something for security…

try this,

 
w -h  | cut -d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq

this will list all the users on the mac as i would think the would be a admin account on there

as i said email me if you have and questions/problems.

Thanks dude,

just put in that command and we’re the only user. I’ll do the second solution tomorrow and give you a heads up

quickandeasy said
Thanks dude, just put in that command and we’re the only user. I’ll do the second solution tomorrow and give you a heads up

ok, just out of intrest have you tried making a password for the current user and then going in to system prefs? i dont know if that requires a password but its worth a try

Just for the record: did it ship with a OSX insall disk (Snow Leopard? Lion?) If that’s the case, booting from that DVD is the easiest solution.

@aaranmcguire for your second solution, won’t you need administrator rights to boot into single user mode and remove the AppleSetupDone-file?

Joost said
Just for the record: did it ship with a OSX insall disk (Snow Leopard? Lion?) If that’s the case, booting from that DVD is the easiest solution.

Sorry, forgot to mention this, there is no start up disc.

She’s paying PC World £8.99 a month for insurance, so I’ve told her to take it back and tell them to sort it out, but first I’m going to back it up and try that second solution.

If something goes ka-put, we can just let PC World replace it haha

I guess you can just run those commands that aaranmcguire pointed out then (in Single user mode) – it’ll take you to a setup screen to create a new admin account from which you can then login and change the settings the way you want to (or grant the other account administrator rights)

That should work!

I’m just a little puzzled though.. I guess this means that having a password on your admin account doesn’t prevent someone with physical access from getting to your account? Seems like quite the vulnerability.