Getting admin access without the Setup Utility: another option, for the sake of completeness.
- Boot into single user mode by holding command-S on boot up.
- Enter
/sbin/mount -wu /
when the prompt appears to mount the filesystem
- Enter
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
- Enter
reboot
At this point, it should run the colorful little setup utility that ran when the machine was new. This'll create a brand new admin account. This method can be useful if you don't want to mess up any existing accounts on the machine.
Before step 4 you can use the passwd
command to overwrite the current password for any accounts on the mac. The command ls /Users
will show all the user names.