Manuel Mejia Jr
- 2001.03.19
Q: I just got a Mac that has "At Ease" installed. At Ease
prevents me from reprogramming the hard drive, and I do not have
the access code to shut down this program. How do I deal with this
problem?
A: "At Ease" was a piece of software that was designed for Macs
that were in a school environment. It prevents individuals (such as
curious children) from carrying out tasks such as deleting
applications without a password. While it is good for school
networks, it is a hindrance to the individual Mac user.
The best way to deal with the removal of At Ease without using
the password is to reinstall the Mac OS. Using the OS installation
disks or CD, the Mac user can overwrite the At Ease "corrupted" OS
without affecting any applications or files that are on the hard
drive. Just install a clean copy of the OS; there is no need to
reformat the drive.
There is one other method one could be tried for the removal of
At Ease. One could try to use Norton Utilities to remove At Ease,
but this technique is not recommended. At Ease is integrated into
the Mac OS - if it is removed, the OS is likely to become
nonfunctional.
UPDATE: Bruce Hossfield wrote in with an even simpler method:
Boot the computer with extensions off (hold down the Shift key
during startup), trash the At Ease Stuff, and restart the computer.
Others report this is not possible if an Administrator password has
been set, although you may be able to disable At Ease by booting
from another drive.
Manuel Mejia Jr is familiar with Mac IIs, LCs, and older PowerBooks. He
uses his Mac LC, PowerBook 145B, and PB 100 with System 7.1 on a
regular basis and recently added a Mac Plus running System 6 to his
collection. He's quite familiar with both System 6 and System 7. He
also owns the Pina books on repairing compact Macs from 128k through
the SE. You can read more about Manuel's computers in Manuel Mejia Jr's Four Old Macs.
