How To Reset Mac OS X Forgotten Password

This Episode is broken down into Two Parts. Part 1: How To Reset Mac Users Forgotten Password In Under 60 seconds (or basically how someone can compromise your Mac's user password in under 60 seconds) using OS X. Coming up in Part 2: Protect Your Inve$tment, Mac Lock-Down.

TRANSCRIPT:

So, onto PART 1:
Perhaps your intention is to reset your Mac's forgotten long elaborate password, but what it someone got hold of your Mac and it's their intention to do so...which is...let's face it, not what you want.

No matter how sophisticated you might think your password is, It's possible to reset it, in under 60 seconds.

What you will need...

A Mac with the built-in OS X System Recovery partition, also know as the Recovery Hard Drive (Recovery HD).

The Mac Models listed here all include OS X Recovery when using OS X Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks.

MacBook Air (Late 2010 and later)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 and later)
iMac (Mid 2011 and later)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 and later)
Mac Pro (Late 2013)

The Mac used for this tutorial is as shown here.

Tip: To check if your Mac has the built -in Recovery HD, simply restart your Mac by holding down the Option Key, keep holding down the Option key till you see your Mac System hard drive and Recovery HD icons.

If you notice that the Recovery HD is not present, then follow the procedures shown on the video titled: “Create Recovery HD Mac OS X Mavericks” on this channel.

Without getting too technical, the OS X Recovery disk or partition includes a built in set of utilities that allows you to reinstall OS X, repair your disk, and even restore from a Time Machine backup.

With the requirements out of the way…

...Let's Get Started

And without using any time lapse.

Basically; after pressing the Power Button or restarting your Mac, hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R). Press and hold these keys until the Apple logo appears.Press and hold down Command-R, let go when you see the Apple Logo, after a few seconds or so, you should see the the OS Ten Utilities Window.

Now, from the menu bar, click on Utilities then select Terminal.

At the Terminal Prompt, Type: "resetpassword"

A pop up Windows will appear, select your Mac's Hard Drive and then the User whose password needs resetting.

Now you can take your time selecting another new elaborate password.

As you can see, in under 60 seconds you are able to reset or compromise anyone's password.

Which begs the question, why bother creating an elaborate password in the first place?, if it's that easy to compromise your Mac.

So what can you do to prevent someone besides yourself from resetting your password?...All is not lost...coming up in Part 2, I'll demonstrate how to Lock Down your Mac more securely, so that even Yoda can't access it...well maybe only Yoda.

Hope to see you back for Part 2.

Thanks For Watching

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Thanks and Peace.