Drive format and apply a HD image

Hi there,

I'm sure you've heard this a thousand and one times before, but I am a little stuck.

Basically, I've not used a mac for years, so anything I did in terminal or with the software/hardware config has long since gone.

Well, I'm looking to move away from PC and into Mac as it is abit more practical for what I'm looking to do more of (mobile audio AND photography), in this instance I'd look at buying a new machine rather than faff about with second hand and would possibly avoid such future problems.

But I came by a dirt cheap Mac Mini, and I thought, great for in the livingroom on the TV. Can watch my movies off my NAS etc.

Now it works, but not very well. The OS is there, boots fine, runs fine and all the rest of it, but I've notice silly issues, god knows what the chap who had it before me had done but safari has gone off the system, and firefox wont open, I've tried to download a .dmg of FF (Its running 10.3.9 btw) but the OS is having none of it. Either giving me CRC errors or the installer prog doesn't recognise it once its mounted.

So I thought to make life a bit easier I'd just wipe the HD clean and re-install, but comes the time old tale of it didn't come with the origional disc.

I have a HD image .dmg of OS X 10.5.8, the latest OS that the Mini will run, and I need to wipe the old OS (rather than overlay) and start fresh, but I don't have a second mac to run the drive as slave or the boot disc to run Disc Utility to wipe and apply the HD image.

Best option? Is there a way or alternative of making some sort of bootable Disc Utility to drag the image in off a USB drive?

Cheers, Sam.

I will add, I don't have an orig apple keyboard so unless you could tell me how to do Apple + S, that idea is out

Not much you're going to be able to do without some sort of a boot disk. The dmg of Leopard that you have is not legal, and so we're not going to help you with that.

You can purchase Leopard (10.5.8) off eBay if needed, however, it will be expensive since you need a retail version. You may be better off trying to find a copy of Panther (10.3.9) or Tiger (10.4.11) on eBay and use it to wipe the hard drive. Just be sure to buy a retail version since a model specific version of OS X will not work unless it's specifically for your model Mini.

gr8