How to restore factory settings on Imac
14 December 2009, 07:50 PM
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How to restore factory settings on Imac
I bought a second hand 20" Aluminium Imac to add to the others we are running in the office. Now, I don't have the install disks that came with it, how do I restore to factory settings?
Hopefully Marcus will know the answer to this as I can't seem to find the answer on Apples support site.
Hopefully Marcus will know the answer to this as I can't seem to find the answer on Apples support site.
16 December 2009, 12:27 AM
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What settings are you referring to?
You *could* create another user with admin rights, this would give you a clean user, not 100% sure you could easily remove the old one though.
I just wiped my mac today and started again and it didnt take long to do.
I recently purchased Snow Leopard and did a fresh install from that disk, it cost £20-25 and technically you should have Tiger/Leopard to upgrade from, we do have that but it doesn't ask for the old Leopard discs or a serial number....
There are thousands of hidden files you couldnt easily clean off unless you know what you are doing.
The Omni Group - OmniDiskSweeper will tell you where your disk usage has gone...
You *could* create another user with admin rights, this would give you a clean user, not 100% sure you could easily remove the old one though.
I just wiped my mac today and started again and it didnt take long to do.
I recently purchased Snow Leopard and did a fresh install from that disk, it cost £20-25 and technically you should have Tiger/Leopard to upgrade from, we do have that but it doesn't ask for the old Leopard discs or a serial number....
There are thousands of hidden files you couldnt easily clean off unless you know what you are doing.
The Omni Group - OmniDiskSweeper will tell you where your disk usage has gone...
16 December 2009, 12:50 AM
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My guess is that you basically want to perform a clean install of the OS, removing all traces of the current OS, settings and applications.
As Rich says, you are going to need an OS installation disk. If you already have another iMac of the same model then you could use the install disks from it. If you don't then DO NOT use the install disks from another machine, it could cause problems. They aren't meant to be unique to a specific model but it does appear they are.
If you don't have a similar machine then do you have a retail OS disk, as in a retail version of Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard. If you do then, and we'll ignore the legality of things for the moment, you can use that retail disk to install the OS on the machine, providing of course it supports the OS you are trying to put on it, for example, it might not run 10.4, but should run 10.5 and 10.6.
I guess it really depends on what OS the other machines are running and what OS you want running on this new machine.
As Rich says, you are going to need an OS installation disk. If you already have another iMac of the same model then you could use the install disks from it. If you don't then DO NOT use the install disks from another machine, it could cause problems. They aren't meant to be unique to a specific model but it does appear they are.
If you don't have a similar machine then do you have a retail OS disk, as in a retail version of Tiger/Leopard/Snow Leopard. If you do then, and we'll ignore the legality of things for the moment, you can use that retail disk to install the OS on the machine, providing of course it supports the OS you are trying to put on it, for example, it might not run 10.4, but should run 10.5 and 10.6.
I guess it really depends on what OS the other machines are running and what OS you want running on this new machine.
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