circumventing unknown password

Hi

I'm working on an iMac which was inherited after the owner died. I don't know what the original owner's password was and as he was the administrator a lot of things like software updates are locked out. Can anyone tell me how to circumvent this password without re-installing OS X please?

Current OS is Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Cheers

Smudger

If you got it with the disks, the just do a reinstall as getting the password isn't trivial.

Hi Ashwin

I didn't expect it to be trivial and I want to avoid reinstalling although I do have the disks.

I was thinking along the lines of booting into single user mode, copying the password file, creating a new password file and setting up as if the system was newly installed. Would that work?

Cheers

Smudger

Well perhaps not that hard after all..

Check out Change the Admin Password with Mac OS X Single User Mode

Now were getting somewhere! Thanks Ashwin.