I forgot my password to install applications

Hey everyone, sorry to be a bother and what not but I'm in great need of help.
I own a recently purchased Macbook Pro (slow transition from PC all my life and loving it btw) and have now encountered my first problem with it.

Mind you its not the machine one bit, it is the user, me. so yes.. I am a noob and you will know why after you read this.

Here is a quick recap of what happened :

- I forgot my password to install applications is the main reason this all happened.

- Unable to locate the password in the key chain, I was told if you put the OSX install disc in and started re-installing it would prompt you to change it - but you wouldn't actually have to go through the entire install. Archive and install was selected If I can recall But I'm not 100% positive. its been over 10 hours this has happened and very frustrated with myself.

- I began to do this. For some reason I looked more into this AFTER i started and found out that you could change it on the top desktop bar. So I stopped the installation.

- So after that, and a reboot, the install disc continues to come up. again and again. So now I'm thinking everything is gone. Still not to sure if it is or isn't yet. I go into the utilities area and am able to find a folder of previous users and everything I had on my lap top in there. So a little glimmer of hope came through again, thinking all my stuff was still on here somewhere.

So my question is:
Is there a way to start my lap top up from that original user again? is there a process? is it even possible? is everything lost completely even though it still has an archive of everything I had but lost because I canceled prematurely?

Please help. I'm afraid to actually let it fully install again in result of loosing everything for real this time. I usually am good with backing up but in the last 3 months have failed to do so and now I suffer.


ANY answer, good or bad, will help. Again, thanks for the bother and thanks in advance to anyone who can shine some light on to this.

I think you really need to continue the archive-and-install. After it started installing, it started writing/deleting/moving files and it's not an operable system at this point. If you did archive and install, your stuff is still there and you'll get a clean start on the OS, so it's not a bad thing at all. It's time consuming, sure, but not bad. But at this point, you really don't have much choice but to continue the installation.

Stopping an installation process after it's begun is always a bad idea. I have only seen bad things come of it.

I am pretty sure Quiara is correct and it has not deleted any of your data yet. But, as pointed out, it was in the middle of moving things around. Starting the install over again, your data may not be where it's expected to be any longer. Just sort of depends on where in the process it was stopped. That is the route I would go, but I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Yet again I see that Superduper! is well worth it's price. Having a bootable backup, you would just restart from your external drive, run Superduper! and have it backup to your internal drive and about 30-60 minutes later you're back where you started from.

thanks for the quick response guys.

Yeah, stopping the install mid way was a stupid thing to do. Obviously this was my error, not the machine so I have no one to blame but myself.

I will continue to install I guess but I heard about starting up in transfer mode with another Mac hooked up to mine and being able to access it to retrieve my files, then safely moving them and then continuing to install just in case. is this true/do-able?

Yes if you have another machine to be able to do that. I'd find some online specific directions for doing it instead of winging it. Maybe someone more familiar with that process can provide a good link for you.

NOTE: Absolutely nothing to do with MacBook Pro hardware.

Moved to Software Forum.

sorry about the wrong spot! my bad!


All fixed for now. just went ahead with the install, didn't erase anything and now I have a fresh start along with all my files in a previous user folder. Only bad thing is I gotta re-install the applications.. which I'm totally not complaining about. thanks again!

I'm gonna have to do an archive & install one of these days just to see exactly what stays and what has to be installed or set up again.

Glad is worked out jk.