Enter the command 'resetpassword' (without the quotes) and press the key to bring up the password reset utility.
After booting into the Recovery Partition, Select Utilities | Terminal. Continue holding it until the Startup Manager loads. From a powered off state, power on the Mac and hold down the key prior to the Apple chime. So, for this article, why not mix the two? Take the three methods listed below and use them to regain access to an administrative level account-and in the process, learn how to protect against others attempting to do the same. But one thing I always took away from it, the lesson to be learned: In order to best know how to fix it, you've got to learn how to break it. Ironically, in the early days of my IT career, this occurred a few times while I was learning my way around Group Policy or Apple's Server Admin Tools. However, either extreme could inevitably lead to one of two scenarios: unauthorized users are granted elevated privilege(s) once the weakness is exploited or the environment is so secure, even the IT department has been striped of their once almighty access.
Between managing the devices, network, and users, it's easy to get frazzled and overlook a hidden setting or lock down a configuration a little too stringently. Being a systems administrator can be a difficult job at times.
