I wrote about this a while back on my blog, hackaddict, but it was such a popula r post I thought I d give it a revisit.

A lot of people buy used Macs, and they of ten run into the problem of not knowing the admin password, so here is a way to get around not knowing the admin password on Macs. To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and cr eate a new admin account: 1.Reboot 2.Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime. 3.When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand ne w admin account (hitting return after each line): mount -uw / rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone shutdown -h now 4.After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as t he new admin you can simply delete the old one and you re good to go again! Be sure to type it exactly (including spaces and caps). Do each line one at a ti me, hitting Enter after each. I did this on 10.3 and 10.5. mount -uw / rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone shutdown -h now

Worked for me on the 2001 iMac and it came up as OS X 10.1 after I was able to g et in Localhost recommended I run these two lines first /sbin/fsck -y and /sbin/mount -uw / (root was read only) so I did that before doing the remove. It left everything on the hard drive, not that I want it.