Login password removal

Any easy way to do this?

[ritch_b]

We've just managed to recover a G3 powerbook from an ex-employee which is running Mac OS 9.1 & apart from a terminally dead cd-rom, it seems in good shape.

As a not-really Mac-savvy kinda guy though, I'm well stumped as to how I can get round the login screen at startup & have had no joy getting the details from the ex-employee, surprisingly enough. If the cd-rom was working, booting off the restore disk would probably do the trick & I've tried the "Command-Option-P-R" combination to no avail.

Is there any easy(ish) way to get around this problem and get rid of the need to login - perhaps through the Open Firmware?

Apologies if this is blatently obvious but as mentioned before, I've not had much experience with Macs.

:-/

R.

[bodine]

Unfortunately, the "easy" way is to boot from a CD. :(

If you had an external hard drive, you could load OS 9 on it (using another computer), and use it to boot the PB. I can't think of another way. Since the CD-ROM is dead anyway, you could get another one and go from there...

[mivox]

Yeah, I don't think you'll get too far without a working CD drive, or an external hard drive you could hook up to it... somehow, you need to boot the machine from another disk.

[jamesa]

Did you try booting with extensions off? Hold the shift key on startup.

Hope they didn't set the PW in open firmware - not sure if that could be done in 9 though.

You can search Apple's knowledge base at [info.apple.com ]

[ritch_b]

I can say with some sincerity that I gave up on the Open Firmware route & having found a friend of a friend this weekend who was willing (after minor arm-twisting) to lend me the CD-ROM from his Powerbook, things are now looking up!

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

R.

[EliteWeb]

ritch_b, apple made multiple ways to boot off of media devices with system resources on them, one for the cd-rom and also via scsi id's but without having the cd in system 9 you can not bypass extensions asuming multiple users is enabled and it's restricted. Glad you got the CD-ROM to get it back :)

[sonjay]

Depending on which model of PowerBook G3 it is, Target Disk Mode is the easiest way to handle this. If the PB has a FireWire port, it will probably be capable of handling Target Disk Mode.

With the PB turned OFF, plug a FireWire cable into the PB and plug the other end into any other Mac with a FireWire port. (That 2nd Mac can be running.)

Then turn on the PB while holding the T key down.

The PB will appear as an external hard drive (target disk) on the desktop of the 2nd Mac.

You can then retrieve all the contents from the disk and reformat, reinstall system software, or do whatever else you wish with it.