12-14-2011, 10:11 PM

I recently purchased a Macbook running Snow Leopard off of eBay. It runs great, but the person never wiped the drive.

Whenever I turn it on, it brings me to a login screen, and it says "Mooreville High School." It took forever to find a way to get around it.

I tried following a few suggestions I saw online about going to system preferences->accounts, giving myself admin rights, then deleting the original admin account. It wouldn't let me do that.

I can't remove things from the dock, I can't move anything to the trash. In fact, I really can't do much more than browse the internet. The Mac didn't come with any disks, and I really don't have the money to have Apple intervene.

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm on my metaphorical knees right now.

12-15-2011, 07:30 AM

Buy the $69 Lion USB install drive and wipe and reload the Mac from scratch.

Lesson learned right?

You could try getting the $29 Snow Leopard DVD but depending on your Mac it might not work as the release data of your Mac might be after the release date of the SL DVD and therefore may not boot or install the OS.

12-15-2011, 07:53 AM

Haha true, true. The person selling them had hundreds available, and I just happened to get the school one.

I'll try the Lion suggestion. Do you know if they actually sell it on a disk?

12-15-2011, 03:36 PM

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Bet the seller did not include software install discs? Make sure it is not Firmware Password Protected as it will not boot from an install DVD or thumb driver. And it comes on a USB thumb drive for $69.00 as Macswork says. This is what you see if this is the case:-


http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1352

Suggest you be a bit concerned about that Moorville High School message. Check with the school to make sure it has not been stolen. Anti-theft is the main measure for installing Firmware Protection.

12-15-2011, 03:39 PM

How can I find out if it's firmware password protected?

12-15-2011, 04:53 PM

Originally Posted by harryb2448

Suggest you be a bit concerned about that Moorville High School message. Check with the school to make sure it has not been stolen. Anti-theft is the main measure for installing Firmware Protection.

Agree on this one. I work for a large school district with thousands of desktop and tablet computers. When a computer or similar piece of technology is placed in disposition, the entire hard drive is wiped clean (after all, site-licensed software has been installed) and the original out-of-the-box OS is re-installed. Hardware is then placed on public auction through the school district website and must be bid upon for payment directly to the district.

I do know people who have purchased older equipment from our school district, and it's literally bare-bones. There is, however, no school district password login on the computer, as all of that has been removed prior to sale.

I would be very suspicious about the origin of this computer, personally. We are a one-to-one district on many of our campuses (students and faculty are issued tablet computers), and there have been quite a few instances of these tablets being pawned and/or sold.

12-15-2011, 06:35 PM

Yeah that's exactly what I was worried about txtchr. I tried googling the high school and got a ton of results, but I'm not sure which one is the right one. If it is stolen, I'd gladly return it.

12-15-2011, 07:36 PM

I did a search for Mooreville High School. That also produced a link for Lee County Schools in Mississippi. Every search I did for Mooreville High School produced the same search. You may want to check the district website located here:

Lee County Schools Home

The machine you have will possibly have a tag (bar code) number on it; it also should have some other identifier on it showing the serial number (or you can obtain this from the About this Mac information). Contact their IT department and ask if this particular unit has been reported as lost or stolen. Sometimes school laptops have a Lojack or similar security device installed.

Good luck. If it's legit, then proceed. If not, I'd report the eBay seller to eBay.

12-15-2011, 07:37 PM

I think I just figured it out. All I had to do was remove the server that it was attached to, and now it's operating normally. I've worked in tech support for four years helping people fix their computers. Never thought I'd be on the other end of things. Haha. Thanks for all your suggestions! You guys are awesome.

12-15-2011, 07:39 PM

I'll still contact the school, no doubt. I don't think it was the seller's fault though. He was selling over 300 Macbooks, and ships them out as the orders come in. However, it probably would have been smart to at least have someone check each one... Thanks for the link. I'll get on it in the morning.

12-15-2011, 09:01 PM

A good idea, just to be on the safe side.

Quite a few pieces of technology equipment are either bought with bond money or federal/state grants. I know that at least here in Texas equipment has to be inventoried, tracked, and disposed of in a very orderly fashion because of this. Our IT department is quite thorough about keeping records because an audit is the last thing that they want to go through. Twice each year I have to submit the inventory records alone on every piece of equipment that is in my classroom alone so that they can synch it with the district records.

Unless this particular school district is lax about their inventories, I'm sure they operate in a similar fashion. School districts (and their finances) seem to be under the microscope lately, particularly due to the cuts in federal and state funding for public education.

12-15-2011, 10:15 PM

I understand. I went to a brand new high school when I was in my sophomore-senior years. We were lucky to even go to the computer lab once every so often, and the computers weren't high-tech: They were basic Windows XP computers. We would have been lucky to have gotten to use Macs.

The seller replied to me and let me know that they wipe computers for Mooresville Public Schools and sell them. So I guess I'm in the clear.