Reboot the computer and hold the COMMAND and S keys down to enter single user mode. The admin password should now be changed. Go ahead and enter a new password.Īnd the machine will reboot. The computer will now prompt you to change the password for ' lmadmin' (or whatever the short name was). For example, if the admin was rather prosaically called ' imadmin', you would enter ' passwd imadmin'. Enter 'passwd', a space, and the short name of the admin. It should boot into a command line.Įnter these exact lines.

The easiest way of doing this is by looking at what the directory is called in the Users folder. You can reset the password by printing out (or writing down) and carefully following these steps.įirst, find the short name of the admin user on the machine. It simply removes the user accounts and lets you create an initial admin account as if the computer were new out of the box. This last method does not actually change a password. The second-to-last command above will cause OS X to think that the operating system is newly installed, and when the new owner starts up the computer it will send him/her to the startup wizard where he/she can start a new user without reinstalling. Message, then the system is corrupted and needs to be reinstalled. If after seven tries you still do not receive a 'Filesystem OK' If you do not receive a 'Filesystem OK' message then repeat this command At the prompt, type the following commands pressing return after each The COMMAND-S keys until a black screen with white type appears.Ģ. Boot to Safe Mode by restarting and after the chime press and hold down

(these will only work on Leopard or earlier)ġ. If you are unable to boot from an installer DVD : OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password. Or see Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password and Instructions in the dialog window that will appear. When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.Įnter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password See the following for changing the admin password: The username is the filename attached to the /Users/ username/ folder.

Forgot mac admin password