My apartment complex has a place in its trash area where people just sort of leave stuff they don’t want anymore but still works. Someone left a very old 2009 iMac downstairs, and I snagged it since it would be perfect for my workbench to just run a web browser when I need to use it for quick searches, music, or printing labels.
It’s running Manjaro and naturally I don’t have the password. I’ve read through several posts about the different methods for resetting the password when you have forgotten it or mistyped it, etc.
Seems like the easiest solution for non-power users like myself is to use a Live CD. Having read the wiki on this topic, I think it’s a bit beyond my understanding on how to actually create one.
Would appreciate a more dumbed down walk through the how to create one myself or to create a bootable USB (perhaps this is the same thing).
Just want to be able to login — actually, I would prefer a method to wipe current user and all his information. I have no idea if he cleared all of his stuff before putting the iMac in the trash area but I don’t want the liability of having access to anything. I’d like to create an entire new user and make a password for myself.
Any help would be greatly appreciated since I’m not a power user!
Just treat this as purchasing an OEM computer that is not pre-loaded with any OS or factory software.
Whether through the Apple forums or other Apple/macOS communities, you’ll have to figure out how to install a fresh copy of OS X El Capitan to this iMac.
Just reinstall Linux, it’s easier than the following the steps below. It will wipe out whats on the drive.
Boot from an installation disc (where you are automatically root), mount your normal root partition on /mnt so that you can access the files on it, edit the /mnt/etc/shadow file where passwords are stored, and carefully backspace out the encrypted rootpassword.
And after that you can change the user password to find out what was in the users home directory.