New Mac user, need help

Hello everyone,
I'm new to the forum, obviously Anyways, I have been toying with
the idea of learning to use a Mac just to see if maybe I would like it more
than PC. Well, this weekend I picked up a Macbook Air from a Pawnshop for
a good deal. The only issue is that I didnt realize that the original user is
setup as admin with a password, so I cant update any of the software!
I dont have the original disk, so I cant reinstall I am able to use it, but
it has isses because it needs the updates. It is a model 1,1 1.6GHZ 2G of
ram and an 80G HD. It also has OS X 10.5.5 installed, but when I run
updates it needs ALOT! of updates and it keeps asking for the admin PW!
How do I solve this problem? My cousin has Leopard disk, so can I use his
disk to format the HD and re-install the OS? Doing some research, I am not
sure now that I got a good Mac model being so old. What I dont understand
is how can it be slow being a Duo core unit? My old 2.9MHZ centrino PC
will run anything I install on it and this Duo core Mac can't even run IMOVIE.?

Anyways, any help would help me. I would normally approach this problem just like a PC, but it being a Mac I thought I'd ask the experts.

Thanks,
Ram68

Sounds like the computer just needs to start clean. You need to reinstall the operating system fresh and start anew. It will erase any information that the previous owner had on there. If your friend has the disk, by all means, use it.

By all means do NOT use a friend's disc. Besides the fact that it is illegal (and recommending such is against the forum's TOS), if that disc is the factory one that shipped with your friend's Mac, it won't work (those are machine-specific).

You should go ahead and just grab a retail copy of Snow Leopard (10.6) for yourself and reinstall OS X from scratch. The manual walks you through everything. Wiping that drive clean and getting a fresh start hopefully will make a noticable difference. You just have no idea what the original owner did to it.

Should I install snow leopard or just leopard because I don't think snow leopard will really work that well on my old MacAir. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

ram68 said:

Should I install snow leopard or just leopard because I don't think snow leopard will really wor that well on my old MacAir. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

I'd grab Snow Leopard. It's a much better OS than Leopard is and will probably be faster for you. It's also a lot cheaper.

You can tell us you're a new Mac user in your post, and we can assume you're posting because you have a question, or "need help". Please use the topic title to identify what you need help with. It's actually one of the "rules" here. Not saying this is a rigid kind of place, just that descriptive titles are helpful.

SL should run ok with those specs. Since it already has 10.5.5 you can "legally" buy the $29 disc.

Sorry about that. So, I can buy the upgrade and do a fresh install with it? I wish there was another way because it has office on it and that's one of the reasons I got blind sided and didn't fully check for passwords. Oh well, I would rather start fresh since it does run kinda slow and probably would give me some more drive space. I'll go out and buy SL as long as I'll fix my problem and it will work. I was starting to get buyers remorse, but an extra $29 is ok to get it at a starting point. Thanks for all the fast replies! I will give The Mac world a try. This is a great forum!

Ram68

Once you get it going, you can download NeoOffice or OpenOffice instead of having Microsoft Word.... They are free downloads.

ram68 said:

So, I can buy the upgrade and do a fresh install with it? I wish there was another way because it has office on it ...

Click to expand...

It's not like Windows. (although I don't know how reinstalling Windows goes down) Anyway, you can install SL without losing Office. But, at some point you're going to need a disc for Office, probably for Office 2010 for Mac, rumored to be coming out before 2020.

No worries about my "rant" regarding the title. I should give up on that. There are at least two a day in the forums I visit here with non-descriptive titles. It's a losing battle.

ram68 said:

Sorry about that. So, I can buy the upgrade and do a fresh install with it? I wish there was another way because it has office on it and that's one of the reasons I got blind sided and didn't fully check for passwords. Oh well, I would rather start fresh since it does run kinda slow and probably would give me some more drive space. I'll go out and buy SL as long as I'll fix my problem and it will work. I was starting to get buyers remorse, but an extra $29 is ok to get it at a starting point. Thanks for all the fast replies! I will give The Mac world a try. This is a great forum!

Click to expand...

I'll second those recommendations by 6string. MS Office may be on there, but since you don't actually have the discs, you don't actually have the rights to have it on there. Chances are high that you don't really need MS Office in particular anyway. OpenOffice is a great free alternative that supports most of the features in MS Office. It's highly unlikely you'd really miss anything.

Terminal commands

Did a search on this forum and found these terminal commands for resetting the admin password, but not sure I want to try this. Has anyone ever tried it?

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

Reboot
Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
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

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!

Never Mind on the scripts, got it working; kinda

Thanks for all the input. I quess my last post was taboo because no one commented on it; sorry about that. Anyways, I bought SL and did the upgrade and updated all the applications that needed updating. The only issue I have now is that imovie doesnt work I launch it and the menus come up at the top of the screen, but I never get a window. I click it again and I get a grey window that just sits there. I also read that the only way to link a HD video camera to imovie is via Firewire; well my
MBA doesnt have FW! Tried reloading imovie and still the same results!
Is my MBA model 1,1 1.6GHz just too slow for this program?

Thanks,
Ram68

ram68 said:

Thanks for all the input. I quess my last post was taboo because no one commented on it; sorry about that. Anyways, I bought SL and did the upgrade and updated all the applications that needed updating. The only issue I have now is that imovie doesnt work I launch it and the menus come up at the top of the screen, but I never get a window. I click it again and I get a grey window that just sits there. I also read that the only way to link a HD video camera to imovie is via Firewire; well my
MBA doesnt have FW! Tried reloading imovie and still the same results!
Is my MBA model 1,1 1.6GHz just too slow for this program?

Click to expand...

There was nothing taboo about your last post. It's more likely that no one watching this thread knew the answer.

As for iMovie… you may need to reinstall the iLife suite, unless the version you have isn't compatible with Snow Leopard. I know at least iLife '08 and onwards is supposed to be.

ram68 said:

Did a search on this forum and found these terminal commands for resetting the admin password, but not sure I want to try this. Has anyone ever tried it?

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

Reboot
Hold apple + s down after you hear the chime.
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

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!

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't see this post.

I posted this for someone the other day who was in a pickle, but it didn't work for them as there was no admin account on their Mac due to a mix up at the Apple store when they setup his computer.
I'm sure it would have worked in your case, but always better to have install discs anyway,