Okay, here's how much of a newbie I am to a Mac: the first one I have ever seen is setting on the pull-out of my desk. It is a PowerBook G4. I don't really know which os it has on it. When it boots it say's OS X, after booting it seems to load Mac OS 9, or at least it say's "classic starting"(what's that about?). Some friends of mine inherited this machine and it seems that when sis passed, so did the password(s). They asked me to try to get around the admin password. Never having played with a Mac, I jumped at the chance. Well...start button works. I asked them if they had an os disk and they responded, "probably, maybe, some where, I'm sure"; haven't seen it yet. Please keep in mind that if I didn't know these peoples circumstance to be ligit I wouldn't be doing this. With that in mind, here goes. 1) If they end up not being able to find an os/cd, which one do they need to procure? 2) Is there any way I can get them going , temporarily, without admin privileges until #1 is resolved? Also, I Googled most of this stuff and decided I don't even know enough to ask Google the right questions. So, if you could dumn down your answers it would be a plus. Thanx in advance for any response! S It's the trees moving that makes the wind blow

With dual booting Macs like yours, hold down X to boot into os x. go to system preferences and open 'startup disk' select the 'Mac OS X 10.xxxx' option. Restart. Boom.

jtblq, Thanx for your reply. When I try to unlock sys. preferences I am prompted for the admin user name/password. That information isn't available right now neither is an operating system boot disk. The previous owner of this machine is deceased so I think I'll wait a few days to see what the family comes up with in the way of software. The machine should be reformatted anyway. Thanx for your help. It's the trees moving that makes the wind blow

I just found out a way to reset the password without a disc (the traditional method includes booting from an install DVD). Go to this website and follow these directions. This hack fools the OS and makes it believe it's brand new and will allow you to add a new administrator account. http://theappleblog.com/2008/06/22/... it works because I used it this weekend on my old iMac LOL