System Restore

First off, Hi! I am 100% new to mac (FANCY DANCING SHOES, feels like an AA intro there). Anyways, I have been a pc user since 1989 back in the good ole 286 days, and Mac is completely alien to me at this point. I have recently aquired a macbook 2.1 and am planning to use it with garageband to help with my music. I think it is far superior to most all pc based programs of the same genre without going into professional getups. With all that being siad, here is my dilema:

The previous owner of this machine has OS X 10.6 snow lepoard installed on it, but also has a pile (5,300+ songs and more movies, videos, and pictures than i could count) of files, not to mention all kinds of programs intalled. Now i know on my pc, all i would have to do is boot and hold down f2 to boot from restore partition and do a completely fresh install of windows, reformatting the hard drive in the process. On a mac, is this an available option? I do not have restore cd's with it, so I will be forced to pay ~$60 (i think) from the apple store to buy a replcement set. If this is what i have to do then so be it, but I was hoping there was an easier way, also one in which I would not have to wait for the disc(s) to arrive.

I appriciate any help in this matter, and please bear in mind, i can turn it on, but kinda do get lost for the most point from there ;D , but even old dogs like me can eventually learn new tricks, or we just find a sunny spot and take a nap. Either way it works !!

For your own security as well as that of the previous owner, not to mention really making that purchase your own, I would strongly recommend the purchase of the $30 Snow Leopard upgrade (retail) disc from your nearest Apple dealer. You will need this as a boot disc even when Lion (another $30) comes out next week (says the latest info), because Lion is not coming out on disc. You may want to put off upgrading to Lion for a while and get the iLife '11 box set instead, Lion's bound to have a few teething troubles with some third-party software and perhaps some bugs (as most new OS versions do). It will always be available from the Mac App Store later when you're ready to upgrade.

I would recommend a clean install, getting rid of everything the previous user had.

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Go to your local Apple Store or Best Buy and buy the Snow Leopard upgrade DVD. ($29.00) Since you already have Snow Leopard on the machine (10.6) a reinstall of Snow Leopard will only overwrite the system files. It does not remove or delete applications, documents, music, photos, etc.

You can if you wish, do a clean install of Snow Leopard by erasing the hard drive first and then installing Snow Leopard. But that will also wipe out iLife which means iPhoto, iDVD, and other iLife apps. The iLife apps are only included with the full Snow Leopard boxed set which is $119.69 at Amazon.com. More expensive from Apple.

Keep in mind if you do retain those apps on the machine that you bought, it's likely many of them are not legal unless you have the original disks and SNs.

chscag said:

Keep in mind if you do retain those apps on the machine that you bought, it's likely many of them are not legal unless you have the original disks and SNs.

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Thanks guys for the quick replies! You are exactly correct, I have no idea what all is on the machine, and I looked through the iTunes players and 99% of what was there is not in my tastes, and what was there i did like, i have on cd anyway. I would really prefer to just do a completely clean install. I called the local Mac store and they told me it would be $75 for them to do a system restore for me, so I like the DIY $30 option much better. Also I just looked and the iLife is $49, so together it would be around $80 for both and do it myself, or pay the Mac store guys $75, and then go buy iLife later. I am really liking the DIY option ! Now the million dollar question, with a purchase from best buy of snow lepoard, how hard will it be to reformat and reinstall a completely clean system? Hopefully no more than a 6 on the good ole 1 to 10 scale !

On a side note, I have my cd collection ripped on to mp3's to play off my phone through my pc at work, can I play them iTunes as well, or will it try to make me purchase everything? remeber I am Mac newbie so I have to ask!

Thanks again for the fast replies !!

mp3's are (happily) mp3's. You can play them on iTunes

Clean install: piece of cake. It's more time than effort.

I just had to do this for my wife's upgraded machine. Total time to install both SL and iLife *and* move all her stuff back from the backup: about three hours.

What about just creating a new account for yourself and deleting the old owner's account? For the most part, OS X contains most users' settings, documents and data to the account. Now, Applications will often install for all users, but you can always delete them.

cwa107 said:

What about just creating a new account for yourself and deleting the old owner's account? ....... Now, Applications will often install for all users, but you can always delete them.

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That sounds like a viable option as well, in windows, the registry gets so clogged with installed applications that it will bog down the system, and most of it never gets removed even when an application is uninstalled (hence the secondary market where you have to get registry cleaners). Does mac suffer from these same problems? Although all being said, I will be making a trip to Best Buy, to pick up a copy of Snow Lepoard Saturday, and doing a fresh install.

Again, many thanks to everyone for the quick replies, and sagely advice !!!

trek_fan said:

That sounds like a viable option as well, in windows, the registry gets so clogged with installed applications that it will bog down the system, and most of it never gets removed even when an application is uninstalled (hence the secondary market where you have to get registry cleaners). Does mac suffer from these same problems? Although all being said, I will be making a trip to Best Buy, to pick up a copy of Snow Lepoard Saturday, and doing a fresh install.

Again, many thanks to everyone for the quick replies, and sagely advice !!!

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There is no registry in OS X. The core OS doesn't allow modifications to its folder structure and files, so it's perfectly viable to just kill off a user account and clear out the cruft without doing a complete reinstall.

Update: Lion will be released on Wednesday (Apple confirmed this repeatedly in their conference call).

Well darn,

1 trip to best buy = nothing, do not carry mac os's
1 trip to local mac store = nothing (seriously, no snow leopard, no lion, no ilife, nothing, and they were listed on the apple website)

I guess it will be buying them online and waiting for shipment. is ebay trustyworthy for software? A copy of iLife 11 is $22.50 with free shipping.

I guess it will be buying them online and waiting for shipment. is ebay trustyworthy for software? A copy of iLife 11 is $22.50 with free shipping.

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My opinion: Stay away from buying software on eBay. If you really want the iLife suite, buy it from the Apple App store. This way you'll know your copy is legal and you can always download it again if need be.

We should also mention that once you upgrade to Snow Leopard and do the free upgrades to 10.6.8, you can buy iLife (in whole or in parts) instantly via the Mac App Store. So you have the option of buying iLife (the whole thing) for $49 or, for example, just iPhoto for $15.

chas, you have a link for iLife 11 on the App store, because no searching I do for it shows up. There's no individual iDVD or iWeb in the store either. iWeb I understand, but would think a lot of folks would want iDVD.

Try this link :


iLife 11