Q: My daughter locked herself out of her ibookG4, she can't remember her password

Forgot Your Account Password

For Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks

    Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.

     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow

     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.

     Or see:

       Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password

       OS X Mountain Lion- Reset a login password,

       OS X Mavericks- Solve password problems,

       OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.

For Snow Leopard and earlier with installer DVD

     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password,

     OS X- Changing or resetting an account password (Snow Leopard and earlier).

For Snow Leopard and earlier without installer DVD

    How to reset your Mac OS X password without an installer disc | MacYourself

    Reset OS X Password Without an OS X CD — Tech News and Analysis

    How To Create A New Administrator Account - Hack Mac

Do you have the disks that installed this current OS or the original installer disks?

You can reboot from the installer & try using a 'reset password tool'. That will allow her to login to the account. it will not reset here keychain password, so unless she can remember that the access to the saved passwords will be gone (many people don't use this feature anyway).

The reset password tool is different on older OS's so it could help to know what version of the OS is running. The page suggests it is a menu item on OS's below 10.3…

OS X: Changing or resetting an account password (Snow Leopard and earlier) - Apple Support

(see the 'Resetting a password without an additional account' section)

Boot into the install disk as that help page states.

(or do what Kappy said )

Jeffnkelle wrote:

 

She doesn't have the OS X discs either

Read the last link Kappy posted. It may allow you to create a new admin account on that Mac, which could allow you to change her password.

It may help to know what OS you are running, try clicking the text in the login window - some of it cycles & tells you the OS X version.

If you are just looking for important files & have another Mac (or PC with Firewire) & the right cable you can try target disk mode…

How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode - Apple Support

TDM will mount the internal disk on another computer - you can dig in & see documents in the /Users/her-account-name on the disk that mounts.

Which version on that page did you try? It has instructions for several OS versions. Do you know what OS you have installed?

The OS should reboot after the reboot command is issued, did that happen? If not force power off by holding the power button & then restart.

Is it stuck rebooting into single user mode?

Her files should not be lost by that approach - you simply have made a new user account. Each user account has it's own files & cannot see other users files.

Open System Prefernces > Users (this may be called accounts - you still haven't told us what OS you are using).

Select her account & look for the option to reset her account password.

Log out & log back in as her user. It should still have her files.