Frustrating problem with an old G3 Imac - ACCESS DENIED!

Hi all,

I'm pretty stumped and was wondering if anyone had any ideas to remedy this frustrating problem. I bought an old G3 Imac on Ebay for like $20 for my wife's dad. It has system 9.2. The seller said it had accounts that he did not have the passwords for. I figured I could somehow just do a re-install and start a new. NOT! There are 3 accounts on it. The previous owner was apparently a teacher as the 3 accounts are:

Administrator - no password

Teacher - no password

Students - login allowed


The weird thing is the Students' account only allows extremely limited access to the computer. It opens a folder that has like 3 things in it. IE, some painting program and some game and THAT'S IT. No access to the hard drive, desktop, system folder, etc. I have an old system 9 install disk but it will not mount..just spits it out. Nor will it allow me to boot up when holding down the "c" key. The CD drive works as I popped in an audio disk to test it. The system 9 disk is fine too..it mounts on my current system. If this old Imac had Firewire, I could possibly connect the 2 and boot up that way but it does not.

Does anyone know a work around? Any way to get access to over ride these passwords and start a new? ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

Hi there,

Two things it could be...

1) the OS9 cd you have may not be compatible with that Mac, not all were!

2) with it coming from a School, they could have disabled 'boot from cd'.
There are various ways round this, the easiest way is remove one stick of RAM, then reboot and zap the PRAM, once it boots shut it down and add the RAM back in.

Hold down command-option-P-R to ap the PRAM.

Then you should be able to use the 'c' key to boot from cd.

regards

Ric

Many thanks Ric for the reply. However, the fly in the ointment with your suggestion is that there is only a single RAM chip installed. Plan B if you please?? Thanks!