How do I find out a former owners password?

Call him and ask him, as you should have done at the time you bought it - as well as obtaining the original install disks.

If he won't provide the disks (as many do not) then try booting into Single User Mode by holding down Cmd-S. Then type:

• fsck -fy
• mount -uw /

At this point you can go 2 ways:

1. Changing the password of the current user - type passwd <username> where username is the short name of the user you want to change.
2. Starting the setup wizard - do a rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone. This will start initial setup.

Then, you can type shutdown -h now to turn off the Mac.

Have you tried point one? You need to be running full Unix to do passwd.

->Start up some utility processes that are needed.

sh /etc/rc

->You will probably need to press the return key once the system stops typing.

Seemed to work fine for:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/04/25/change-admin-password-mac/

Without doing the sh /etc/rc. It seems to no longer be needed (don't quote me though, I usually use the method #2 or remove the NetInfo database as well).

I haven't tried it either in years. How passwords are save changed in 10.5 ( or was it 10.6 .) Apple got ride of the netinfo database.

Robert

I booted my Tiger 10.4.11 in single user mode via holding down the command + s when powering on.

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

passwd user-name

# returned without asking for new password.

# ( did not work )

# ->Start up some utility processes that are needed.

sh /etc/rc

passwd user-name

# asked for new password.

# (worked).

So, the working of passwd has changed over time.

Robert