Computing with Bifocals - The Lost Password || The Mac Observer

Computing with Bifocals - The Lost Password
by - March 8th, 2006

If you are reading this on your own personal Mac running OS X, then when you installed the system software and set up your Mac the very first time, you had to enter a name and a password. By so doing you were setting yourself up with an account, and by default, setting yourself up as an administrator of your machine,

And as is always the case, with power goes responsibility. The administrator is the person who has the power to make system-wide changes, install updates, install applications, and generally make all the decisions about what happens on the computer. There can be more than one account with administrator privileges, but only if the original administrator, or someone that original administrator has designated as also having administrator privileges, sets it up.

So what happens when you need to get into your computer and you don't know (or remember) the password? If there is more than one account on the computer with administrative privileges, another user with administrative privileges can log in, open Accounts and let you reset your password.

But what if there is only one account and there is absolutely no way to get the password. You could reinstall the system software, thereby deleting everything on the computer and starting fresh, but what if that is not an acceptable option?

This issue came up when a friend's spouse passed away. All their financial, tax, and insurance information was on their computer and the automatic login option* was not activated, meaning the spouse required that the administrator password be entered each time the computer was turned on. The surviving spouse asked me for help getting at the data. Depending what version of the Mac OS you are running, follow the these instructions

If you are using Mac OS X 10.3.9 and earlier, use this method:

You will have to have the Mac OS X install CD which should have come with your Mac. Following these steps shouldn't affect your keychain or any of your other passwords.

Turn off your computer and insert the install CD.
Press the 'C' key while you turn on the Mac and hold it down until the Apple logo appears.
Select 'Reset Password' from the Installer menu and choose your username. (Don't choose 'System Administrator' as a name.) Then follow the prompts.

If you are using Mac OS X 10.4.x "Tiger" and later, use this method:

You will have to have the Mac OS X install CD which should have come with your Mac. Following these steps shouldn't affect your keychain or any of your other passwords.

Turn off your computer and insert the install CD.
Press the 'C' key while you turn on the Mac and hold it down until the Apple logo appears.
Select 'Reset Password' from the Utilities menu and choose your username. (Don't choose 'System Administrator' as a name.) Then follow the prompts. (In other words, for Tiger, Apple moved several features to a "Utilities" menu, rather than the "Installer" menu.)

An obvious issue here is that if you can bypass your administrator password then so can someone else. I make sure that my computer and my system installation CDs are not kept in the same location.

Oh, and by-the-way. Since all the family financial, tax, and insurance information was kept on the computer, it is unconscionable that one spouse did not have the ability to access the information.

In my next column I am going to discuss a way you can safely protect information on your computer down one more level, without spending any money on additional software.

*To turn the automatic login option on or off do the following:

Choose Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts.
If the settings are dimmed, click the lock icon and type an administrator name and password.
Click Login Options and select or deselect 'Automatically log in as'.