Password for used iMac?

September 26, 2008 5:53 PM

I have an old fruit-flavored iMac that I bought on eBay for $100. iTunes wanted to update itself, and I said OK. But now it wants a password that apparently was set by the original owner before it will update. How can I bypass this?
posted by megatherium to computers & internet (3 comments total)

support.apple.com: Changing or resetting an account password
posted by thejoshu at 6:02 PM on September 26, 2008

Another option, and one that will probably offer much better security in the long run, would be to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS.
posted by box at 6:55 PM on September 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You need to know the old password to update it, though, right? Or, you need to log in as Administrator... but you need the Administrator password for that, and I bet you don't know it. You can change the Administrator password by booting off the install CD, but you probably don't have that either!

There is one other way. It involves scary command-line-fu, but I've done it myself, so I know it works. Boot into single-user-mode and change the Administrator password, reboot normally and log in as Administrator, then change the user's password to whatever you like.

On preview, yes, it is a better solution to reformat the drive, but it takes a while, and you need the install disk, obviously.
posted by dammitjim at 6:59 PM on September 26, 2008