This morning I got and e-mail from the site.  Doug has forgotten his Admin password for his make ( or it was changed by mistake) and he needed help figuring out how to reset it. Bellow are the instructions for Snow Leopard. If you need the instructions for a different version then scroll to the bottom of the page for the link to the apple support articles on this subject.

This is a 2 step process because your user password and ...]]>

This morning I got and e-mail from the site.  Doug has forgotten his Admin password for his make ( or it was changed by mistake) and he needed help figuring out how to reset it. Bellow are the instructions for Snow Leopard. If you need the instructions for a different version then scroll to the bottom of the page for the link to the apple support articles on this subject.

This is a 2 step process because your user password and your keychain password will both have to be reset. The first step is to reset the user password from your OS boot disk.

1. Start up from a Mac OS X Install disc (one whose version is closest to the version of Mac OS X installed).  Usually, you can start from the disc by putting it in your computer, restarting, and holding the C key. Or, put it in the computer and click the Install or Restore icon you see in the disc’s main window (after which the computer will start from the disc without you needing to hold C). Or, you can use Startup Manager or the Startup Disk preference pane to select the Install disc.
2. Choose a language, click the arrow button to continue,
3. Mac OS X v10.6 or later: Choose Password Reset from the Utilities menu.
   Mac OS X v10.5 or v10.4: Choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu.
   Mac OS X v10.3: Choose Reset Password from the Installer menu.

   Tip: If you don’t see this menu or menu choice, you’re probably not started from the disc yet.
   
   Note: The default keyboard layout is U.S. English while started from the installation disc. If you use a keyboard layout other than U.S English, use the Input menu (the flag icon on the right side of the menu bar) to select the desired layout before typing a new password.

4. Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume.
5. Select the user name of your original administrator account.Important: Do not select “System Administrator (root)”. This is actually the root user. You should not confuse it with a normal administrator account.
6. Enter a new password.
7. Click Save.
8. Click the red button in the upper left corner to quit the application.
9. Choose Quit Mac OS X Installer… from the Mac OS X Installer menu.
10. Click Restart.

Now the second part is to reset your keychain Password. Now this is where it gets tricky because if you don’t remember the old password the only option for you is to delete the keychain and start from scratch with a new one. the following will help you try to figure out your old password and then help you to delete it.

If you want your default keychain to be unlocked automatically when you log in, synchronize your Keychain Access and account login passwords by doing this:

1. Open Keychain Access (you can get to it by choosing Utilities from the Go menu in the Finder).
2. From the Edit menu, choose Change Password for Keychain “login.”
3. Type the former password of the account that you are currently logged in to, then click OK.
4. If you entered the correct password, a new window appears; enter the original password again in the Current Password field.
5. In the New Password field, type the password that matches your current account password.
6. Re-enter the newer password in the Verify field, then click OK.

I don’t remember my original (former) account password

If this is the case, you’ll have to delete the keychain.

1. In Keychain Access, choose Keychain List from the Edit menu.
2. Delete the “login” keychain.

The next time you log in to the account, you can save your current password in a keychain.

To read the original apple support documents on this use the following 2 links
Mac OS X: Changing or resetting an account password
Mac OS X: Keychain Access asks for keychain “login” after changing login password
Deleting a keychain

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After Apple updated Time Machine and The Airport Extreme you can now have the same function as Apples Time Capsule. I am going to include this as 1.5 of my backup solution “Mac Backups Made Easy“.

You can get an Apple Airport Extreme from Amazon for 174.99 and that is 5.00 off of Apples price and they toss in Free Shipping.You can also pick up a really nice Western Digital 500 gig My Book for 129.99 and it gets shipped for ...]]>

After Apple updated Time Machine and The Airport Extreme you can now have the same function as Apples Time Capsule. I am going to include this as 1.5 of my backup solution “Mac Backups Made Easy“.

You can get an Apple Airport Extreme from Amazon for 174.99 and that is 5.00 off of Apples price and they toss in Free Shipping.You can also pick up a really nice Western Digital 500 gig My Book for 129.99 and it gets shipped for free as well.

Updated by Matt after some information I had wrong. Sorry

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• Backing Up
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Over the last year or so of running New Mac User the question I am most often asked is “What is the best way to backup my system?” I have tried to give just about everyone who asked advice on what will work for them. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I firmly believe that until you lose some very important data backing up is not a priority for you. This was the case for me. Right after ...]]>

Over the last year or so of running New Mac User the question I am most often asked is “What is the best way to backup my system?” I have tried to give just about everyone who asked advice on what will work for them. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I firmly believe that until you lose some very important data backing up is not a priority for you. This was the case for me. Right after my wife and I had our second child, Maddie, we were in the waiting room for her one month check-up, and something happened to my macbook. It would not come out of sleep mode and it would not restart. The drive just would not mount at all. Needless to say I had not backed up my computer since we had made it home from the hospital and the only copy of all the pictures we had taken were on that hard drive. I tried everything, but nothing worked on the drive because there was something physically wrong with the drive and it would not spin up. Not to fear I was able to recover the pictures from the camera card, but everything else was gone, and for the week in between losing the drive and figuring out I was able to get them back from the SD card I was really sweating it. If I just had a backup procedure I would not have spent the hours I should have been sleeping trying to figure out how to get my pictures back.

Normally when someone asks me “Do I need to back up my computer?” my first response to them is also a question, “Can you afford to lose all of your data and for how long can you be without a computer?” Most of the time the answer to the question is the same: I can’t live without “insert your most valuable thing here” and then they tell me that they really can’t be without the computer for one reason or another.

If that answer is close to how you would answer than you really need to make sure that you have a redundant back up solution. Most people say that it would cost way too much. I tell them that I could them a redundant system for under $175.00. They say that sounds good to them.

To get started on this system you will first need a drive that is big enough. The bare minimum for my solution is two times the size of your internal hard drive. For example, if you have a 160 gig internal then you will need a 320 gig external. I have found a great drive from Western digital on Amazon for 132.00 (get it here Western Digital 500 gig My Book)

After you have the hard drive, you will need to fire up Disk Utility from your utilities folder inside Applications. Make sure the new external drive is plugged in and turned on. If you use a dual format drive like the Western Digital 500 gig My Book, which supports FireWire,USB, and e-SATA, then you will want to use the FireWire feature on your Mac. Select the Drive from the menu on the left and click on the partition tab in the middle of the main section. Here you will want to create 2 partitions (more if you want to use the drive for more than just this backup application). The first partition you will want to make about 1 gig more than your internal hard drive. So for the 160 gig internal hard drive we talked about above you would make the first partition 161 gig and the second would be the rest of the space on the drive. If you are good at labeling the drive I would name the first partition Super-Duper and the second Time Machine.

We are now done with the Hardware setup. In the next part we will discuss what you will be doing with the first partition.

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Have you ever wanted your Mac to just hurry up and connect via the Airport? All you need to do is tell your computer in what order it should look for an active connection. It is a real simple fix just open up the Network Pane in System Preferences and select the airport tab. You need to click on the “gear” near the bottom of the pain and select “Set Service Order” then move the airport or others around until ...]]>

Have you ever wanted your Mac to just hurry up and connect via the Airport? All you need to do is tell your computer in what order it should look for an active connection. It is a real simple fix just open up the Network Pane in System Preferences and select the airport tab. You need to click on the “gear” near the bottom of the pain and select “Set Service Order” then move the airport or others around until you have the order you want and click OK.

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The best FREE update software is now Leopard Ready. AppFresh is just what it says it is. it helps make sure that your applications are up to date. This clean app runs when you tell it to and checks your applications to see if there is a new version ready. Give this app a try over at Metaquark.de

Have you ever needed to change the time a file was created or last accessed? I know that I have had to make a file look like it was created last week so i could tell the boss I had been working on it when i really had not. Over at the Macenstine weblog they go through a really involved process to explain how to achieve this.

Step 1: Set your clock to the time you SHOULD have made the file.

Step ...]]>

Have you ever needed to change the time a file was created or last accessed? I know that I have had to make a file look like it was created last week so i could tell the boss I had been working on it when i really had not. Over at the Macenstine weblog they go through a really involved process to explain how to achieve this.

Step 1: Set your clock to the time you SHOULD have made the file.

Step 2: Use Terminal to set the date of your file to the new, wrong, “current” date and time.

From Macenstine

There is a better way as long as you are not terrified of the terminal.

Go to your utilities folder and open Terminal and navigate to the folder that the file is in. Once you are in the correct Directory then type “touch -mat YYMMDDHHMM [filename]” (with out the “‘s)

If you want to do a batch, create a folder with all of the files you want to change, navigate into that folder and type:

touch -mat YYMMDDHHMM *

If you don’t want to change date last accessed, remove the a, or the m if you don’t want to change date last modified.

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