Help! Something seriously wrong with my Mac!

Erm, so I realized that it wasn't quite as big a problem as I had imagined, but I did realize that I accidentally may have moved some important files to the trash can in an attempt to clean up, and now am getting the black screen and this error message when I boot:

/etc/master .passwd: No such file or directory
-sh-2.05b#

Can I resolve this without using my Mac OS X Install disk? I figure I would be able to reset my password with the disk, but I don't have my disk, I think I lost it a long time ago, so was wondering if there is anything else I can do?

Really appreciate your help.

Ok, got it! Back to normal now.

scoutfinch said:

Ok, got it! Back to normal now.

Click to expand...

What did you end up doing? Maybe it can help others.

So basically, I stupidly moved the var and etc files from the private folder(silly me!), so I asked my dad for help since I don't know command line.

So if you accidentally move these files to the Trash like I did, you simply have to move them back to their correct location, so go ahead and run single user mode (shut down, restart while holding command+S.)
In the shell enter: mount -uw /
Press Return.
Enter: mv /Users/yourusername/.Trash/etc /etc
Press Return.
Enter: ls -ls /etc/passwd
Press Return.
Verify that the password file exists.
Enter: reboot

Should be fine and dandy then.

This article may be helpful as well, but it's really only if you delete these files altogether, so don't go through these steps if you simply moved around the files.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106908