Password prob

Ok a bit of background - was bought a Mac Perorma 460 like yrs ago and for the past 4/5 it has been lying in my garage unlooked at.....recently my mum had the brilliant idea of trying to use it to store records on but I had set up a profile on it and password protected it - but it's been so long that i've forgotten the password >_<;

A friend of mine suggested opening it up and removing the internal battery but I think that wipes everything on the HD yeah? And the boot up disks and all the software have long since been lost - also I'm now working in Windoze so I have no way of writing to a mac formatted disk so i can't simply download the software and transfer it over =/ Anyone got any ideas as to how I can get past the password screen? Any help would be greatly appriciated

v_Ln

Pull the battery. That should reset the bios to defaults. It will not harm the HDD.

Now keep in mind I'm not a big MAC person, but I do know that one won't hurt the other.

The hard drive will not be affected by the batter removal. That is why you can move a hard drive from one machine to another. The battery only powers your cmos/bios/clock. Those things require constant power to keep their information.

Is the password like a bios password in windows, or is it a password in the mac OS softwear. If it is like a bios password, pulling the battery should work. If it was set up by the OS/softwear, I don't think pulling the battery will make any difference. Like I said, that battery has nothing to do with information on the harddrive.

I agree with Korp. I too know very little about the mac. As you stated above the you cannot use the system without the password -if that did wipe the HD nothing's really changed.

Does MAC offer a Quick Restore disk that wipes the HD and reinstalls the factory deleiverd software? I use to work for Compaq as a member of tech support if the problem could not be resolved in 10 minutes we'd suggest quick restore (I hated that answer but management thought that was the best way to approach support). Compaq would send the QR disk to customers for the cost of shipping.

Cheers,
-D

yeah it did have a quick restore disk - emphasis on did as it has long been lost :(
yeah and its a os password screen not bios - but thanks for the suggestions
dspeidel thanx for the idea about gettin them to send me a copy of the quick restore - will email them about it now...

v_Ln