I work at a computer repair shop, and a client brought in a powerbook g3. when he bought it, he put a password on it, and promptly forgot this password. Without having to reinstall OS9, is there any program/utility that can crack this password and/or reset it?

Try booting while holding the Shift key down. If it boots this way, go into the System Folder>Preference Folder and trash the Multi User preference file and restart.

i held the shift button down for the whole booting process but it didnt take me to a different screen :(

just for reference, when i boot it it shows me the happy macintosh and then immediately after that goes to a password screen with a picture of a computer with a belt around it and an option for there being a hint to the password (there is none)

ignore the previous post. we got it to boot to the OS9 CD. It asks for a password to access the hard drive, if you don't give it it shows the desktop and all that, but the hard drive is not mounted and im pretty sure it wont mount unless you give the correct password. is there another way to mount the hard drive?

Apple did provide a special diskette for this. i had acces to it when i worked in an applecenter (back in 1994)