Panther Password Problems

Sorry if this is a regular problem - i have spent all night searching the internet and tried various things to no avail:

here goes anyway;
I have a eMac that i recently bought from an auction - yes - a REAL auction in and auction room! . The disks were not with it and it seems that the admin password is locked down and i have no way of knowing it.

Someone i know had a tiger disk and i thought that i could use this to reset the password. Trouble is that when i try to start the install procedure so i can get to the reset password bit, - when i hit restart, it says "Type in an administrators name and password to make changes to Install Mac OSX" - obviously, i do not have these and i have no way of ever getting them - please could someone advise me how to get round this , or maybe just re-install the whole operating system like you can do in Windows?

I can get a copy of panther for about £30 - would this be the best approach and how do i get by all that adminstrator stuff? Thanks in advance.

Reboot the computer with the disc in the drive (Click the Apple -> Restart). Hold down the C key as soon as the computer starts to boot and then you will be able to reset the password

C Key

Hi, I have tried that and nothing seems to happen. As i bou8ght the mac cheap it had no keyboard so i am using a pc usb one if that makes any difference.

is there a particular moment that you need to press the C key? i did try it a few times and nothing. It looks like the administrator may have disabled that or something.

shonkyboy said:

Hi, I have tried that and nothing seems to happen. As i bou8ght the mac cheap it had no keyboard so i am using a pc usb one if that makes any difference.

is there a particular moment that you need to press the C key? i did try it a few times and nothing. It looks like the administrator may have disabled that or something.

Click to expand...

What trpnmonkey meant was that when you do get your OS X CD's, to boot up with the disc in the drive whilst holding down the "C" key. Yes, you will need to get the CD.
It won't matter what keyboard you use, so long as the disc is in the drive when you do so.

C Key

hi - yes - i have tried that, i do have a cd (DVD) in at the mo - the DVD for Tiger - would that work?
If so it does not appear to be doing so, I hold down the C key and it just boots into OSX as normal - says waiting for network initialisation and then boots into the admin / user area. ( obviously i can only click on the User account which has severley limited functionality) - it looks like the C key at startup has been disabled (unless I am missing something) - i am very new to macs so i don't know how to get round this. Id ther a bios or something on macs similar to PC's - maybe the administrator has disabled boot from CD in there if there is?

Surley a Tiger CD would work would it not?
Or am i going to have to get the Panther CD for it to boot?
All i want is to reset that pesky password then i'm ok.

When a mac is reformatted and loaded from scratch - is this the way to do it, if so then why does the C key not work????