I have recently purchased a G4 Emac running OSX.3.5. It is a second hand machine and is running well. However it has the old administrator password installed by the previous owner and I want to know whether I can change it to a password of my own. I do not have the original OS discs yet but may be getting them if they are needed for this change.

Thanks for any help as I am unfamiliar with OSX.

:lol:

yeah you'll need the os disks (software install and restore) to change the password - pop the disk in and once the installer opens, choose reset password in the menu bar. follow instructions from there on...!

If you know the current admin password you can change it in the system prefs under users, or you can set youself up a new account with your username and password, set it as able to admin the machine and then delete the old account. This will clear out any prefs, etc that may be left from the previous owner & get you going with a nice clean user account.

Thanks for the info Yin Yang and Arty, getting sick of seeing the old owner's name keep popping up when I start up.

The password reset options using the install CD is absolutely brutal security wise. There is likely a way to completely disable resetting a password from the install CD, but still....

its possible to make the system not be allowed to boot from cd's
ive heard of it being done a while ago