Can someone give me some advice for my Macbook?

So, here is the story. I got my son a Macbook (2nd hand off of CL) he has used it with no problems, then, one night, he got this crazy idea that he wanted windows on his Macbook. He installed it, it worked, BUT, all the mac stuff was gone. I have no idea what my little einstein did, but, here I am trying to fix it. I purchased a retail copy of Snow, and have tried to install but keep getting an error message, 'Mac OS X can't install on this computer'

I have tried erasing the drive , repartioning the drive, 'jiggling' the partition a little, AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH, this has been going on off and on for about 2 weeks. We do not have an apple store anywhere local, I have tried posting on our local CL to see if anyone works on this computers, no help, I have googled and read, and read and googled......and the computer has nothing on it, just a blank screen, unless i put the install disk in. So, this is my problem, any advice? Should I smash it with a hammer?

Welcome to Mac Forums

OK.... no biggy.... what he has done, is installed windows, and changed the format of the hard drive.
What you need to do, is insert the SL disc, start up the mac holding the C key as soon as you hear the chime.
Choose language, click continue, then go to utilities in the menu bar on top of screen, then go to disk utility.
When you are there, choose the second HD in the column on the left (the one labeled Macintosh HD) click the erase tab, in the format window choose Macintosh OS Extended (journaled), and then click erase disk.
Once you have done this, quit disk utilities, and continue with installation.
Once installation is complete, if you want to install windows, there is an application called bootcamp assistant, which you will find in utilities folder in applications, which will walk you through installing windows without wiping your mac.
If you get stuck, please post again.

Oh I forgot to ask about the specs of the Macbook.
I'm assuming that you have one of the fairly recent Macbooks which came with at least 1GB of Ram.

Hi, Sorry to hear your story.
So all the stuff on your mac lost? Is there any important data?
I think you may try to some restore software to recover the lost data on your mac if any.

If you want to re-install the mac, just do a reformating before install.

johnyy8 said:

Hi, Sorry to hear your story.
So all the stuff on your mac lost? Is there any important data?
I think you may try to some restore software to recover the lost data on your mac if any.

If you want to re-install the mac, just do a reformating before install.

Click to expand...

At this stage after wiping the HD and installing windows, and 2weeks of jigging around, trying to fix the issue, data recover really isn't going to be an option. Data recovery software, unless the system has not been touched since losing/deleting data, is very touch and go, and even professional Data recovery, as much as having no guarantee, is very expensive, and even then, if the system has been used since losing the data, recovery is very unlikely.