My daughter has just bought a Macbook but has no record of the administrator password, which she now needs. I'm pretty sure there's a method for recovering this, but of course I've forgotten it. She's running Snow Leopard.
You have to start from the original DVD that came with the machine but when it offers to install Mac OS X, instead use the utilities menu - I believe the change password option is there.
Has it come with information on it then? I would have thought it best to do a clean install of SL from the disc. (It may well be that you have the original grey discs but that the machine has been updated to SL but no SL disc supplied. I think that this is against Apple's licence agreement - supplying an updated machine without the discs - but it happens all the time.)
Mike's advice to reinstall OSX on a brand new Mac is good, otherwise if you use the password facility on the grey DVD that come in the box to make a new password your keychain would have to be re-created (/Applications> Utilities > Keychain Access). The old Keychain 'belongs' to the old password.
You might encourage her to make two or more partitions on her new drive too, which is always useful for clones and system updates.
Thank you, Gentlemen;
the machine is new only in the girlie sense of the word, and it hasn't come with any info. She's done a Software update and she was trying to install something connected with the BBC iPlayer when she was asked for the password. I think a clean install was done by the previous owner but she has the discs and I'll attempt to follow Mick's instructions re the utilities menu. I'm going to wait an hour though, just in case you are on line and think of anything else!
Eric Jervis 