Ok, so I’m working on a friend’s G4 notebook and I want to install KisMac - a mighty fun app I must say! Google it - allows for some wireless fun on your airport card. Anyway, so I ask him for his admin password so I can install some things. And lo and behold - he can’t remember it. I mean, it auto logins and all - why the heck should he remember it. So, I look around for a way to reset that without knowing it. I do some things in single-user mode. You know, some of those hacks that are floating around. None of them work. Phooey. So, I figure, yeah, I will just load from the install CD and then use the good old password reset tool. Don’t know about that one? It’s very helpful. Restart your Mac, hold down the “c” key - this boots from the CD. Go up to the menus at the top once the CD has loaded. I think it says “installer” or something. Under there you will see a “reset password” menu. You can reset the password from there. Anyway, I did that. I chose the hard drive and the user and reset it to what I wanted (could be a fun trick to pull on your friends!). Well, what happened next about made my heart fail…
…
The thing hung at the spinning wheel for ten minutes. After which time, I shut down the machine by holding down the power button. I rebooted and voila - no freakin’ user accounts! I rebooted thinking that it must be a fluke. Nope, all he had was some whacked out user, but I couldn’t login into anything. Great, now I’m thinking I would have to rebuild the stupid machine. Nope. Here is a way to rebuild your user accounts database and set up a new user.
To do this, you have to boot into “single-user” mode. Never done it? Don’t worry - it’s easy. Just follow along. Shut down your Mac. Reboot and hold down the command(cloverleaf or Apple) and “s” keys. This will drop you to a *nix command line. First things first. Check the volume for errors. Type “fsck -y” . Now, type “mount -uw /” . And now, type “mv /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb.bad” Now, type “reboot” . Now, when you boot, you will see the OS X setup assistant fire up like this is a new install. Create a user and your off and running.
[tag]Nicl,OS X missing user accounts,account database[/tag]
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Recent Comments