Problems after restoring from disk

[Mark_D]

I had an Intel based Mac Mini running os x 10.4, which recently refused to boot.

It got past the grey screen and apple logo, got to the blue screen and mouse pointer and that was it.

It would not boot into target disk mode either.

I needed to get some work off it as it was coursework so I dismantled it and removed the hdd,

Using a usb adapter was able to save work onto another mac and ran disk utilities, verify only, all is confirmed as well.

Reassemble and I am back where I started except I can now boot to target idsk mode, so I restored from the original media and chose to keep preferences, users etc. There was an error message to the extent that the version of os x on the mac was newer than the one on the disk , that must be due to online updates as it was the disk shipped with the mac.

Seems 95% there except

 

Wep key lost

Sharing preferences all reset to default off

Worst of all the admin account password no longer works

Try the reset password utility from cd and the admin account is not available to be reset (neither are any of the others apart from the 2 I had logged into to check connectivity) The other accounts are mobile managed accounts and the Mac’s are bound to active directory. Server 2003

 

Now at this point I am not overly worried as the local admin account was not used much, however if it had been how would I get back in, I know if I don’t find out now this will happen next week next month whatever and of course be a show stopper.

Anybody got any ideas?