Apple Mac

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Discussion

Whistle

Original Poster:

1,474 posts

138 months

Friday 12th July
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I have an Apple Mac left from my late farther. I don’t have the password but do have an iCloud password.

Is there anyway of accessing it without loosing what’s on it?
I guess it’s full of family photos so would like to retrieve them.

I have looked and for some reason putting the password in 3 times incorrectly it doesn’t give me an iCloud log in option.

Any help would be much appreciated.

BlueMR2

8,691 posts

207 months

Friday 12th July
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If you know his mac account address you could try logging into icloud online to see what is in the backups.

C4ME

1,411 posts

216 months

Friday 12th July
quotequote all
A Mac specialist shop should be able help you with the options available and will be the safest option if the contents are precious. It will largely depend on whether the hard drives have been set up encrypted or not. Please take the below as the basics as it has been quite a while since doing similar and things may have changed.

...

If you have another Mac you can try and start the old one in Target Mode.

On the Mac you want to use as the external disk in target disk mode, do one of the following:

If the computer is off, start it up while pressing and holding the T key.

If the computer is on, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click General in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down). Click Startup Disk on the right, then click Restart in Target Disk Mode.

The Mac then becomes a simple external disk to the other Mac. Alternatively you can have the internal disc removed and mounted in a cradle to turn it into a simple external USB drive (I did this with an old MacBook Pro).

Edited by C4ME on Friday 12th July 19:34

duff-man

628 posts

211 months

Friday 12th July
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Was the Mac connected to the internet when you tried to do the reset?

Have you confirmed that the Mac is registered to the Apple ID by signing into the Apple ID on a different machine?

babelfish

963 posts

212 months

Saturday 13th July
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Whistle said:
but do have an iCloud password.
“Reset it using your Apple ID”
After entering your password up to three times, if you see the option to reset using your Apple ID, click it.

If your Mac immediately asks for your Apple ID, enter that information and click Reset Password.

If your Mac restarts, follow the steps in the previous section, “Restart and show password reset options”.

What happens next depends on how your Mac is set up.

If you’re asked to create a new keychain to store the user's passwords, click OK to restart your Mac.

If you’re asked to select an admin user, you know the password for, click “Forgotten all passwords?”

If you see a Reset Password window with the option to Deactivate Mac, click Deactivate Mac. Then click Deactivate to confirm the temporary deactivation.

Enter your new password information, then click Next. (If you see multiple user accounts, click the Set Password button next to each account name, then enter the new password information for each account).

When the password reset process has been completed, click Restart.



https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102633

Whistle

Original Poster:

1,474 posts

138 months

Sunday 14th July
quotequote all
Thanks for all the replies, with your help and a bit of a chance I have full access now.