02-23-2006, 12:41 PM

I tried setting up open firmware password on three G4 power macs, and after setting it up, two out of three units no longer boot to anything, unless the option key is held, then after entering the password, and clicking the hard drive, the units boot, but I need them to boot to the hard drive normally, without having to reenter the open firmware password every time the computer restarts.

Boot ROM Version is 4.2.8f1
OS 10.3.9
Open Firmware Password application version 1.0.2

Does anyone know how to fix the issue?

Thanks,
RMSe17

02-23-2006, 02:38 PM

You could try resetting the password by removing a RAM chip then resetting the PRAM 3 times. Then put in a new password and try again. My logic being, if it worked on that one G4 then it should've worked on the other two...

Other than that, though, I wouldn't know what to do.

02-23-2006, 03:01 PM

Originally Posted by surfwax95

You could try resetting the password by removing a RAM chip then resetting the PRAM 3 times. Then put in a new password and try again. My logic being, if it worked on that one G4 then it should've worked on the other two...

Other than that, though, I wouldn't know what to do.

I can already disable or set a new password by booting the system up after entering the open firmware password, but I tried it couple times already, and same results. I mean, once I disable the password, everythign works again, but as soon as I enable it, it no longer boots to hard drive without going to the Option menu at power on.

02-23-2006, 06:56 PM

Which security mode did you set the restrictions to in the OpenFirmware?


EDIT: Did you have the correct Start-Up disk selected in SystemPreferences before you set the OpenFirmware password? If you didn't, the computer will not boot after an OF password has been set. If this is the case, you'll have to do what I told you earlier and remove a RAM chip and reset the P-RAM 3 times in a row.

02-24-2006, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by surfwax95

Which security mode did you set the restrictions to in the OpenFirmware?


EDIT: Did you have the correct Start-Up disk selected in SystemPreferences before you set the OpenFirmware password? If you didn't, the computer will not boot after an OF password has been set. If this is the case, you'll have to do what I told you earlier and remove a RAM chip and reset the P-RAM 3 times in a row.

My guess is the correct start-up disk was selected, because the system boots from it by default, but I did not manually go and set the start-up disk. Another thing I found was that if I run the open firmware password application again, and disable the password option, normal booting works again.

EDIT: I found that if I dont use the application, but instead, go to open firmware directly, and use the password and then the setenv security-mode command then everything works as needed.

Not sure what the application does in addition to setting the password, but it seems that doing it manually works. At least on the two machines I just tested.

I just had to dig deeper into OF, and read up on it.

Thanks for your help!

RMSe17