# Creating new & deleting old admin/user accounts



## machv (May 23, 2009)

A friend was just given an old iBook G4 A1054 (2004). I think it was stored in a dumpster since 2009 (last user account activity lists as 2009) it was covered in mud literally. Anyway I was shocked to see that it still worked at all and that the battery life gets 2.5hrs still. I guess that's a testament to MACs. Anyway as there wasn't any username+password information for it or OSx install disk I Googled on how to reset the admin account and found this,

OSX Notes, iBook G4 A1054
General
Reset admin account without OSx CD
1. Reboot
2. Hold appleKey+s (command+s on newer models)
3. Enter the following at the command prompt: (enter each line and rem spaces)
mount -uw /
rem /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you will be able to setup a new admin account.

And it worked.

After filling out the new owners information for a new admin account I looked through the system a bit and saw that the old user accounts were still on it, but protected of course.

As I am a MAC nub knowing next to nothing about them (I had to Google on how to open a context menu to give you an idea) I sent the user accounts folders to the trash. After doing this I thought I should try and reverse the process lest I cause any problems with the system and because I would rather fix it the right way.

I couldn't find the 'restore from recyclebin' equivalent so I copied and pasted the folders back to their original locations. And then post the question here on how to remove a locked user account properly from the system. The Stop Sign emblems that were on the folders were gone from the folders and I could browse through them, whether the copy procedure only moved the non locked files/folders or not I have no idea at all, in Windows I know how to work with user accounts. Also, by just sending them to the trash and copying them back out again would that really remove the need for having the correct permissions to access another users folders in Windows you have to use something like Linux to delete locked files and folders.

I then looked around the control panel restoring on how to restore them back to the way they were and used the repair permissions utility. I thought would put the stop signs back but it repaired the files read write attributes instead. I apologize for the shoddy use of terminology I know and use Windows and am still learning Linux (when I get the time to do so) as for MACs the lack of a right mouse button has me feeling like I lost a finger.

Thanks for any help with this and can someone let me know of any nub tutorials for OSx that I can look up. It's about time I learned OSx. And after seeing how fast that old laptop ran after seeing how much abuse it had gone through has me thinking about looking into getting one myself as I am trying to learn C++ and the like. I need a more distraction free system, where I don't switch to a game every time I get frustrated with programming. lol. Anyway I won't ramble on anymore. bye

Oh and I would also rather not reinstall the OS from scratch as I saw that there were some applications that I don't think would have been part of the base install and my friend likes them (ms Office, for instance), but he could benefit from the extra space he could get from deleting the old accounts and user files as the drive is only 30GB and 14GB is used up.


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