formatting an imac?
 

a buddy of mine bought an imac off craigslit, it's a core 2 duo 1.8 with 512 ram, 18" screen not sure of the model

right now the original user still has all his stuff on it and when you try to login to administrators account it requires a login and a password and he did not provide any discs

is there any way to do a format/recovery without buying OS discs? the version is OS X 104.11

Fastest way: call the seller up?

just download a copy of snow leopard and use it to reinstall

there's no way to format with out discs

best thing you can do is head to apple or bb or fs get osx 10.6 for 40 bucks put it in the drive press and hold "c" while powering on the computer and it'll boot from the disc.

To reset your OS X password without an OS X CD you need to enter terminal and create a new admin account:

1. Reboot
2. Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
3. When you get text prompt enter in these terminal commands to create a brand new admin account (hitting return after each line):
* mount -uw /
* rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
* shutdown -h now
4. After rebooting you should have a brand new admin account. When you login as the new admin you can simply delete the old one and you’re good to go again!

Bypassing an OSX password is too easy. So many ways to do it.

The above will work but honestly just run out and pickup a legit Snow Leopard DVD for $29.99...

Oh yeah grab some ram while you are at it, 2gb minimum, 512mb is for wussies!
Posted via RS Mobile

yea, i told him if anything he needs to upgrade the ram, super low for the price he paid compared to the same computer on ebay

You can also remove the password very easily using basically any OS X disc (download using whatever your favourite torrent site), but a clean format is the best way to go.

I agree, get Snow Leopard for the ~$30 ... Well worth it over Tiger ...

I don't even have a mac anymore yet I still have an OSX Snow disc. lol

time to sell it...

I hated every minute of using that mac but it's unbelivable how easy that was to reset the admin
Posted via RS Mobile

its also unbelievably easy to do other things too on the Mac.