Instructions for the Mac OS X Password Recovery.
Although there’s no real way to recover a lost root password, you can change the root password even if you do not know the current one. You must have physical access to the machine in order to accomplish this task.
1. Click Restart at the login window
2. While the computer is restarting, hold down “Command-S” until you see text scrolling through the window. This boots the computer into single user mode.
3. At the Localhost% prompt type:
/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/mount -uw /
/sbin/SystemStarter
You will then see various services starting up.
4. When the Localhost% prompt reappears, type:
passwd [username]
It will then ask you to type the new root password twice, so do so.
(Though I’ve not tried it, it appears you can type niutil -list . /users to get a list if users if you do not know the username….if someone wants to verify this, I would be most appreciative).
5. After entering the new password, type:
reboot
6. At the login window, enter the username with the new password. Once you are logged in, you can use the Multiple Users application (/Applications/Utilities) to change your user’s password, or create a new user account.
Note: this may not work for newer versions of OS X; I think they did something about it in a security update. I hope this helps you with Macintosh password recovery.
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Hello, everything works untill I enter the cmd SystemStarter. It loads everything untill it starts to repete
“Waiting for Checking Computer Name Setup
Jan 1 XX:XX:XX SystemStarter: Waiting for Checking Computer Name Setup”
Does anyone know what the problem could be?
Hey, has anyone gotten the password to reset for the root account on 10.4 ? I’m actually on 10.4.2, but no luck so far. Anyone?
thank you very much for this extremly helpful site!
As I had to combine some different comments, I thought it might be of help to some of you, when I paste here what I have done!
apple + s –> for single user mode.
/sbin/fsck -y
/sbin/fsck -f
/sbin/mount -uw /
/usr/libexec/register_mach_bootstrap_servers /etc/mach_init.d
cd /var/db/netinfo
netinfod -s local
SystemStarter
passwd myusername
reboot
Hey! Thanks for this helpful hint. I recently discovered that my favorite shortcut, leaving root without a password (Yeah, yeah, I know about security risks. Suffice it to say that I feel safe enough in my situation), no longer works in 10.3.9. Neither the login nor the change password dialogs would accept the blank password. Of course, this meant that I could not change the password to something else. Your tricked worked, but I had to use passwd root, not passwd -i file -l /etc/master.passwd root. I tried the longer one first, so perhaps I have to run both of them. By the way, I tried this on a 700MHz iMac 15″ LCD.
(This should also help with lost ibook password.)
“/sbin/fsck -y”
“/sbin/mount -uw /”
“/usr/libexec/register_mach_bootstrap_servers /etc/mach_init.d”
“cd /var/db/netinfo”
“netinfod -s local”
“SystemStarter”
“passwd -i file -l /etc/master.passwd root
“reboot”
Worked perfect on OS 10.3.9