Tag: Apple

Open Firmware Password Reset

Pre-Intel processor Macs have something called the “Open Firmware”. This is roughly equivalent to the BIOS on non-Apple PC computers. You can set a password on the Open Firmware which will prevent people from booting off a CD among other things. Here is how you reset the Open Firmware password:

1. Change the amount of memory in the computer. It does not matter if you add or subtract memory. If you only have one stick of memory in your computer or memory must be installed in pairs and you only have a sigle pair, then you may need to buy more memory.

2. After changing the amount of memory, reset the PRAM on the computer by pressing command+option+p+r when you boot it up. When you hear a chime that means the PRAM has been reset. Continue holding down command+option+p+r when you hear the chime and keep holding the keys down until you hear 2 more chimes for a total of 3 chimes. You want to reset the PRAM 3 times to ensure it is truly reset. Doing this 3 times ensures it is definitely reset.

3. Restore the amount of memory that the computer should have.

4. Done. The Open firmware password has now been reset.

10.5 Leopard – How to Enable the Root User

Open the Directory Utility application which is located in the Applications | Utilities folder. You may have to unlock the Directory Utility application to make changes. Once it’s unlocked, go to Edit | Enable Root User, and then type in a password for your root user. You can now use the root user, and the ‘Other Users’ option now shows up on the login window.

10.5 Leopard – “Disk error” After Installing Windows Using Boot Camp Assistant

Problem: After running Boot Camp Assistant and doing an initial install of Windows, you get the error message “Press any key to boot from CD. Disk Error. Press any key to restart.” when initially booting into the Windows partition after Windows setup completes. This problem is described in this apple support document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306504

Solution: You need to actually reformat the Windows partition that Boot Camp created. It will be the parition named “BOOTCAMP”. IMPORTANT: Do not use the option named “Leave the current file system intact (no changes)”. Choose to either format the BOOTCAMP partition as either NTFS or FAT format. If you format the partition in NTFS format, you will not be able to write to the drive while booted into OS X. You will have read-only access to it. However if you choose to format the drive as FAT then you will be able to both read and write to the Windows drive while booted into OS X. The advantage of NTFS is that it gives you finer grain control on file access and there is also a performance improvement.