I have an older (circa 2006) MacBook running Tiger. I've been able to install Snow Leopard on an external hard drive and when I restart, it seems to boot from the external drive. However, it asks for a user name and password and the combination I use in Tiger doesn't work. I don't get an option for an admin user/password.
Any suggestions?
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5)
How did you do the install? If you installed from a retail Snow Leopard disk, you should be stepped through the normal setup process during which you would set a user account name and enter a password. Did you use some other process to do the installation other than a fresh installation on an empty hard drive?
I did a fresh installation on an empty hard drive, but was never prompted in that process to do anything with a user account. It was only when I booted up, with the hard drive attached, that I was prompted to enter a user/password combo - and ran into the problem where my username and passwored weren't accepted. :-(
If you did a fresh installation from the original installer disk, then unless you used Migration Utility as part of the installation then you would have been stepped through the process to set up a user acount. Without that there would be no account to log into. So either you don't remember, you didn't install on an empty drive, or you used Migration Utility.
In any case, boot from the original installer, select the external drive, and under the Utilities menu choose Password Reset.
Regards.
Snow Leopard on an external hard drive; sign-in issues, Snow Leopard on an external hard drive; sign-in issues
