Help with my mac laptop

ryaner77

As you are prob well aware by reading the above title i have never used a mac in my life !!!

But i was working on my uncles pc in his restaurant and he had said he had a laptop he wanted me to look at as well.The laptop he gave me had been left in his restaurant by a customer about 12 months ago. It's just been gathering dust in the lost and found !
It is of no use to him or me as a changer and stuff would be needed for it and we both have PC's and laptops.

the laptop is password protected and i was wondering if i could get into it there maybe contact details of the owner !

Any advice on how to get this off would be greatly appreciated. I have searched a little on line and they all suggest using my original os disk but i dont have one !

Please help

thanks in advance

Thumper Long

you need the 1st install disk or another mac to get the info off via target firewire mode.

pa

If it's a Mac OS X laptop, restart it while holding down 'command' and 's' together (command is the key with the little Apple logo on it immediately to the left of the spacebar).

The computer will boot to the command line and log you in as root. Type /sbin/mount -wu / , followed by /sbin/SystemStarter

Type passwd root, and enter a new root password. Restart the computer normally and log in with the password you just created.

ryaner77

really appreiate the help guys, will try it out tonight when i go home !!

fingers crossed !!

Ham'nd'egger

ryaner77 wrote:

As you are prob well aware by reading the above title i have never used a mac in my life !!!

But i was working on my uncles pc in his restaurant and he had said he had a laptop he wanted me to look at as well.The laptop he gave me had been left in his restaurant by a customer about 12 months ago. It's just been gathering dust in the lost and found !
It is of no use to him or me as a changer and stuff would be needed for it and we both have PC's and laptops.

the laptop is password protected and i was wondering if i could get into it there maybe contact details of the owner !

Any advice on how to get this off would be greatly appreciated. I have searched a little on line and they all suggest using my original os disk but i dont have one !

Please help

thanks in advance

If you want to return the computer back to it's owner, go to the computer's underside and take out the battery. The serial code of the laptop will be in the battery cavity, take a note of it and give Apple a call. (More likely than not they will have sold the unit to a consumer directly, if not they will know what re-seller they suppied the machine to.) Whether or not they will help you to reunite it with it's rightful owner is another story but at least you have tried your best.

As a by word, what sort of laptop is it? Colour, make, etc?

setanta5

IF you really want to reunite the owner with his Laptop, drop into the nearest Garda station. Its a safe bet that someone checked there for it and they would have recorded his details if he had.

Worth checking.

ryaner77

tried PA suggestion last night and couldn't really get it, if you read this PA could you PM me the exact code maybe ??? i think im just putting in the spaces and lines wrong. thanks . thought about dropping it into the garda station but personnally think it was such a long time ago that i think i'd have a better chance at getting it back to him/her .

it's a white ibook G4 running OS X

if anyone has lost one of these the password hint is y1

and if you know it you can have it !!

pa

ryaner77 wrote:

tried PA suggestion last night and couldn't really get it, if you read this PA could you PM me the exact code maybe ???

Here are the commands, each on their own line, with correct spaces:

/sbin/mount -wu /
/sbin/SystemStarter
passwd root

If you have problems with these then post the actual screen output and I'll take a look.