I'm having some trouble with my girlfriend's PowerPC G4 running OS 10.3.9. I was going to upgrade to Tiger today, but before I could back up the files, I was having trouble starting up (of course, today of all days). The Mac OSX progress bar was on the screen, sitting at "Login Window Starting" for about 10 minutes. Then it came to the login window. My girlfriend has been using the computer for a few years without using a password to log in, and she can't remember what it was. Mysteriously, it is now not letting us log in without it. I restarted a few times, always the same thing.
We finally gave up on trying to figure out the password. I found a way to reset the administrator (apple+s, a series of commands at the prompt, and restart), but now I'm having trouble with that. I get through the apple ID and registration info pages with no trouble, but when I get to the "Create Your Account" page and enter the info, I get an error message:
"Sorry, an unexpected error has occured.
MESSAGE_FATAL_ERROR
unable to add standard user"
I have tried several times now. I don't know if there is a problem with the info I am entering or what it could be. Is there some other way to do this or get around it? All I really want to do is get to the OS so I can back up the data and install the new OS. Any suggestions? I appreciate any help I can get.
We finally gave up on trying to figure out the password. I found a way to reset the administrator (apple+s, a series of commands at the prompt, and restart), but now I'm having trouble with that. I get through the apple ID and registration info pages with no trouble, but when I get to the "Create Your Account" page and enter the info, I get an error message:
"Sorry, an unexpected error has occured.
MESSAGE_FATAL_ERROR
unable to add standard user"
I have tried several times now. I don't know if there is a problem with the info I am entering or what it could be. Is there some other way to do this or get around it? All I really want to do is get to the OS so I can back up the data and install the new OS. Any suggestions? I appreciate any help I can get.