In the new screen that opens select the main system hard drive (probably only one option).

Type resetpassword and then press Return. Click on the menu barf at the top and select Utilities > Terminal. Soon you will see a screen titled OS X Utilities.

You will see the Apple logo and spinning gear (or progress bar in Yosemite). (or press Alt, wait for the choice and chose Recovery HD). As soon as you hear the chime press and hold Command and R keys together.

Restart the Mac if its on, or switch it on.

(Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan) as they come with a hidden recovery partition. This method works for OS X 10.7 – Lion and newer.

One the installer screen > chose Utilities > Reset Password.ĭon’t press ‘Reset’ at the bottom of the screen unless you want to change access permissions on any folders you have shared.

On the language Chooser screen select your language > Continue (button looks like an arrow).

If the computer is off then boot from the CD by Holding down C when you switch on. Then double-click on the Install Mac OS X icon. Insert your 10.6 disk (or older) into your computer. These methods include using another Administrator account, or using your Apple ID to change the password if you have set these up previously. These days Apple Macs don’t come with disks so we need to use the Recovery Partition or one of the other methods. If you have Snow Leopard (10.6) but don’t have a disk you can use the ‘Single User Mode’ method. If this is the case, and you are using OS X, we have a few suggestions to help you out. If you have an older OS X install CD you can use that to reset your older Mac (pre 10.6). In the busyness of life, sometimes passwords can get misplaced or forgotten.

Mac os x version 10.6 wipe clean