Received broken Macbook Air, don't have password (CD, DVD, laptop)

[civickidd]

One of the big bosses here recently spilled coffee on his Macbook Air and now the keyboard spits out random characters, so he ordered a new one. While talking to him about his, I asked him if he'd be willing to give it to be instead of throw it out.

Well, he finally gave it to me in passing today. He tried telling me the password, but I told him pssht I'll just wipe it out and didn't pay any attention.

Anyhow...I tried restoring a Snow Leopard install DVD onto a flash drive but couldn't get it to boot. I even tried borrowing an external usb dvdrom from someone here to try with the retail dvd. I tried holding "option" down while booting and also "c" while booting, and I see it reading something from the flash drive but it eventually just boots to a login screen. Do I need this bosses login info even to reinstall? Or is it because of the broken keyboard (even though I'm trying to use an external).

Any help would be appreciated. I really can't do much with it anyway till the replacement keyboard comes in, but I'd like to (at least with an external keyboard) get the laptop configured to my liking...

[harhar]

From Apple:

For Intel Macs:

You won’t really have to lose much sleep over it: EFI in Intel Macs (usually) supports USB device booting. To do so, make sure your Mac is turned off, insert your USB device, power the Mac and hold down the ‘option’ key to bring up the Boot Manager. Next to your Startup disk you should see a picture of a CD or a USB device, depending on what device you have connected to the Mac. Select the desired boot device, and you’re good to go.

In the event the Boot Manager throws up nothing but a white screen, give it a little time for it to detect your hardware. If the white screen persists, restart the Mac by holding down the power button until it turns off, and try again: it usually works after 1 or 2 tries.


Are you sure the USB drive contains the proper boot files?

[Sayantsi]

Seems like a lot of trouble when you could just as the guy you know for the password.