Mac OS X Lost Passwords

[DianeLeigh]

At work, Boss's family had 2 Macs (about 10 years old he said, they were going to be wiped and disposed of, then we realized they actually booted, and could be used possibly for development for ios apps so we didn't have to buy a mac computer just for it)--BUT we don't have the password for the computers (despite it being his family's old computers, his son [now in college] and now-ex-wife's [still on speaking terms, one of those "love each other, just can't stand to be in room with each other" situations]... BUT, they don't remember their passwords).  

 

I tried the "get to recovery" option to rest it, but nope!  Only a boot to mac os disk option exists, no recovery disk... Anyone have any ideas?  I thought of using an ubuntu flash disk boot, but I saw it's not possible to boot with it to reset it.. so that's out.  So no clue offhand how to approach it as everything online says to either login and reset it (which isn't helpful given not having it), using the recovery option, which doesn't exist, or using the restore disk, which apparently when they sold their house and moved (we're talking they did within the past week, and he's still getting rid of stuff), isn't going to be found anytime soon if at all.

 

 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

If the Mac work, create a bootable USB macOS installer and boot off of that. Use Disk Utility to format the internal drives and install a new copy of macOS. 

[DianeLeigh]

Hmm... that might work-- I asked one of our Mac users (who has had to reinstall her mac at home) if she has one offhand.  Worth a try at least!