MacBook retore issues

Hello all,
I have been trying to figure out how to restore my MacBook bought in 2007 to factory settings. The reason being I want to start again with a clean slate since its almost unusable.

I have both the original start up disks and the leopard disk I upgraded to. I have tried both disks using the hold "C" method at start up. Each time the disk is ejected and starts up normally. I also tried the command key at start up and all it did was show the hard drive pic with an arrow pointing to it. Clicked on it and it started normally.

Last night I tried to delete my account and the files associated with it. The account was deleted but the files are still on my hard drive. I believe I deleted the home folder but seems it did not work. I also erased all unused space to zero out. Not sure if that did anything.

I am getting really frustrated with this so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Welcome to the forums.

We could proabably help with getting your Mac back to a usable state if you let us know what issues you're facing.

However. If you want to do a clean install;
Put the Leopard disc in and hold Option as the Mac starts up. Keep holding Option to the Mac hard disk icon appears, a few seconds later a DVD icon for your Leopard disc should appear, select that to boot from the Leopard disc and choose Disk Utility from the first screen it stops on and format the hard disk. From here on in follow the install instructions to end up with a clean Leopard install.

One point though...... holding C on startup 'should' work. That it doesn't, makes me suspect your optical drive and/or disc are faulty. But try holding Option and post back with results

Just tried it. I put the leopard disk in. Restarted the computer and held the option key. The disk ejected and the hard drive symbol came up. No disk icon. When clicking the hard drive it starts as normal.

can you see the DVD and few the files in Finder?

When I put the leopard disk in it brings up the install window. When I am in the disk utility I see it there also. I'm not sure what files you are talking about though.

Ok, leave the disc in.

Go to System Preferences - startup
Select the leopard disc and hit restart. If all goes well it should boot to the leopard installer without any further intervention.

Alright. I'll give this a try. I had to go back to work. I'll post when I get home. Thanks for the help so far!

Tried it. The disk ejected as it was booting up. And started as normal.

Can you try your tiger disc?

The same thing happened with disk one of start up disk. Disk 2 didn't show up in the startup disk in system preferences.

Anyone have any other ideas? I really don't want to have to buy a new computer.

Anyone have any other ideas? I really don't want to have to buy a new computer.

Click to expand...

The optical drive on your 2007 MacBook is likely not working right or is failing. Try cleaning it with a can of compressed air that you can buy at Radio Shack or just about anywhere. Blow several short blasts in to the drive, then try booting with the Leopard DVD once more. If that doesn't work, you'll either have to replace the optical drive or buy an external drive and use it instead.

Rlstoll said:

I really don't want to have to buy a new computer.

Click to expand...

That's the frustration talking...
Your CDROM drive appears to be dead. If you want to reinstall OS X, you'll need:
a USB-connected CDROM drive,
or, a bootable clone of the Install DVD on a USB thumb drive
or, another Mac with a Firewire connection (and working CDROM drive)

Or, you can tell us what problems you're having and we can help you fix those (OS X isn't like Windows - reinstalling isn't needed very often).

My MacBook is extremely slow. It does the wheel of death all the time. I can't even surf the web.

Please tell us how much free disk drive space you have, and size of the drive.

And as a first troubleshooting step, try a Safe Boot. I suggest this because it does a disk drive check and repair - without needing the Install DVD as alternate startup disk.
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

Rlstoll said:

My MacBook is extremely slow. It does the wheel of death all the time. I can't even surf the web.

Click to expand...

First, Open Disk Utility - run Repair Permissions

Second, Download Onyx for Leopard
Titanium's Software • Index page
Install and run the automated scripts.

Out of interest if you log into the guest account do you have the same issues?

gsahli said:

Please tell us how much free disk drive space you have, and size of the drive.

And as a first troubleshooting step, try a Safe Boot. I suggest this because it does a disk drive check and repair - without needing the Install DVD as alternate startup disk.
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

Click to expand...

I did the safe boot. I also checked the disk usage in the activity monitor. Space utilized=21.8 GB and space free= 126.93GB. Not sure if you need the system memory? And I ran this from my new account after I deleted my first admin account.

mrplow said:

First, Open Disk Utility - run Repair Permissions

Second, Download Onyx for Leopard
Titanium's Software • Index page
Install and run the automated scripts.

Out of interest if you log into the guest account do you have the same issues?

Click to expand...

I ran the repair permissions. And downloaded onyx. It ran the smart start up thing along with verifying start up and I ran the maintenance and cleaning(system). Should I run daily or weekly scripts?
When using the new admin account I created. I was actually able to get on the onyx website and download it. It does seen a little faster.

All tests and info were done from the new admin account.

It's automated scripts I'd suggest you run. There's a tab for them in Onyx

mrplow said:

It's automated scripts I'd suggest you run. There's a tab for them in Onyx

Click to expand...

Is it the automation tab? And should I run just the checked boxes or should I check them all?

I checked all the boxes and ran the automation.