Mac Login Help

[Shaggy]

My company is primarily Windows machines, except for the Marketing Department, they use Mac's all the way. Our problem is that a previous employee left, and was gracious enough to return the iBook that he had, but it is locked. Their is only one login account on the machine. It is running 9.2. No one has checked it until now, when we have finally hired someone to replace him. Getting the password from him is not an option (we have tried before on some other Forms that he had locked). There is nothing on the box that cannot be replaced, so formatting the drive is not a problem. The problem is, that between all the IT changes within the company within the past year, i do not have OS 9.2, all i have is OS X 10.2. I am not all that familiar with Mac's, so forgive my ignorance in advance.

When i have tried to boot from the OS X cd, it errors the install and reboots?

Any thoughts or direction would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your input.

[KinoEye]

Unfortunately, you are going to need an OS 9.2 disk. OS 9 needs to be present to install 10. If he has a password on the volume 10 can't install, which sounds like your problem.

You'll most likely need to boot off a 9 disk and reformat from there.

You can get an OS 9.2 license pretty cheap from these guys:

www.smalldog.com

www.macresq.com

Another question, what happened to the disks that came with the machine?

I just hope he didn't put a firmware password on it...

[Shaggy]

The disks have "mysteriously" disappeared. Which is another problem in itself due to the amount of Machines that we have 9.2 on currently.

What do you mean by firmware password?

[DeadAddict]

Apple's latest Open Firmware update introduces support for additional security options which allow the Open Firmware to be password protected. Similar to the typical PC BIOS password protection feature, this feature in Apple's implementation of Open Firmware allows you to password protect your computer's ability to boot

[Shaggy]

I did some research and found that out. Thanks for clearing that up though Dead Addict. No it is not Firmware protected

[DeadAddict]

Your welcome I am glad the laptop was not Firmware protected :)

[KinoEye]

Hey Shaggy,
Any luck?