Once you have an install disk in hand, double click on the Install Mac OS icon and you’ll get a window with a big graphic (this is one place where Apple isn’t subtle!) and a restart button. You might also ask yourself if you need to run Tiger, or whether Panther would work for you – it’d be a lot cheaper. One smart way to accomplish this: look for Mac OS X on eBay.
If you don’t have this disk, then your best bet is to buy a copy of Mac OS X, even though you already have the OS installed on your computer (you could try calling Apple (800 SOS-APPL) and asking for a replacement boot disk too). The key to unlocking your system is the Mac OS X install disk. I bet you’ll be surprised how easy it is to change the administrator (known in Unix parlance as “root”) password on a Mac OS X Tiger, Panther, etc., computer.
