Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
An ex-employee left a Macbook Air locked... and ran away with the password.
We don't care what's on the machine - we want to do a fresh install of OS X ML.
Unfortunately, he had Firevault on...
Any tips from the crowd would be much much appreciated.
Thanks.
MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Unfortunately, you can't format the disk without its password
I was afraid of that... any advice/options?
Could Apple do something?
If this is a FileVault password, I don't see why you couldn't just erase the hard drive and reinstall the system. Have you tried holding command-R at startup? If that works, try using Disk Utility to erase the hard drive, then quit Disk Utility and reinstall the system.
However, if he set up a firmware password, you will not be able to erase the hard drive without the password, and there's no way to reset that password without Apple's assistance, for security reasons. (Older machines could have the firmware password reset by changing the physical RAM configuration, but this apparently does not work anymore.)
Thomas is correct. To wipe a FileVaulted Mac, you simply restart, hold down Command-R to boot into Recovery Mode. Open Disk Utility, click on the "Macintosh HD" volume and Erase the volume. You can then continue through Recovery to reinstall the operating system onto it. You will lose all data, but you will be able to use the computer again.
I just did this exact process at work on Friday. It definitely works.
Thanks Thomas and bispymusic!
Yes, it did the trick indeed. I did a Command-R, erased the HDD, and am now reinstalling.
Thanks again!
I need to wipe a Firevaulted Mac
