Going insane, need help!

phasetoophasetoo
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I bought a powerbook a couple of weeks ago and my brother was messing around with it and logged me out, Since he did that i cant log back in i cant remember my password for the life of me, and i have password hint turned off. If someone can help id be very greatfull, ive got a 15" powerbook G4 with mac os 10.3.3

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    If you boot up from an OS X Installer disc, the installer has a menu option for resetting passwords. As long as you DIDN'T use FileVault (or, I might add, as long as your brother didn't turn on FileVault!), that should fix things for you.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Password advice:



    1) Make up a list of letter and number transforms that are easy for you to remember. Things like 'e' -> '3' are common, so come up with some ones that are uniquely yours. (I know one guy that adds his birthmonth, numerically, to any numbers that appear, and takes them modulo 10.)



    2) Come up with a phrase that you can easily remember. An old one I used a few years ago was my wedding anniversary with a couple of words appended.



    3) Run the phrase through the transforms. Voila. Easy to remember, but hard to crack, password.



    I've seen all sorts over the years, but these are the ones that are best - ones that look like gibberish, but that you can reconstruct. I saw one once that was just random letters - until I heard the guy pecking out letters and muttering 'sneezy... dopey...' it was the second letters of the names of the seven dwarves, in alphabetical order. I thought that was clever. Then I saw the post-it on his bulletin board: "little guys 2 sorted", as the hint to himself that no one else was going to easily get. Stuff like that is password gold.
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