WARNING: Doing this with FileVault on will lock you out of the files in the user directory.  Pretty much for ever.  Double check.  It’s not on by default.  But you never know.  And access to the key chain can be a littel fowled up.  Just nuke it and start over.

I recently picked up a PowerBook from a friend.  Oh how long I have lusted after the PowerBook.  And let me tell you.  It’s SO sexy. I mean, I have a BlackBook, technically a superior machine.  But this… this is like race car sexy….aaaany who.  That’s not the point.  Point is he gave it to me and didn’t give me the password.  After some googling around I found the answer, as follows:

• Reboot the system and hold down Command(Apple key) - S
• At the prompt type: /sbin/fsck -y
• and then: /sbin/mount -uw /
• and finally: passwd <username>

What this does is reboot into single user mode (Oh Noes!  Command Line!  Text!!!).  Then the next two commands (Listed above the prompt in Leopard) will mount in read/write mode the file system (You really don’t need to know this) and lastly typing passwd followed by the user whose password you want to change will prompt you for a new password and ask you to verify it.

Reboot and you’re done!