I bought a new used Mac OS X High Sie. Freezes or does Utilities. Doesn't give options how to bypass

[Icey12000]

I bought a new used computer Mac os x based. Of course, it is refusing to start up. Stops on loading bar or goes straight to utilities. Trying to restart clean system tried fixing errors. The disk says locked and I cannot reinstall on the disk and its not letting me partition. How do I bypass the main locked disk? I know the password...I just dont have an option of putting it in. Otherwise how to bypass and remove it so I can reinstall without a physical CD?

Thank you,
Sarah Behnke

 

[Raz0rEdge]

What specific Mac is this? If it indeed has High Sierra on it, then power it down and then while holding CMD+r, power up the Mac. This should get it into Recovery Mode. From there, you should erase the HD and do a full re-install. From there, reboot and set the machine up as a brand new machine.

Honestly, it's appalling that people sell machines in broken states or not working states.

 

[Icey12000]

Hello Ashwin,
It is a High Sierra and I do the recovery repair and such...but it refuses to to allow me to re-install and start brand new because the 'disk is locked' when I try to choose it.
Update: It finally let me put a password in...
However, when I try to reinstall...it says the recovery server could not be contacted.

 

[MacInWin]

Sarah, is this your first Mac? Knowing that may help us communicate better with you. You didn't answer what Mac it was, just gave the operating system. The disk being locked may be because you are booted from it. You have to hold the CMD-R down until the boot is complete or it will go back to regular boot and you get the login screen. At that point the drive cannot be erased because it is the boot drive. Is that what may be going on?

 

[harryb2448]

Buying a used computer, see if you can downlload High Sierra from the App Store, you will need an Apple ID, make a bootable disc using Diskmaker X and a +8GB thumb drive. It is not good nusing a computer with OS installed by ankoher. You need your own ID, password, User files, not another's.

Alternaively, Amazon are offering DVDs on HS for sale. They must be okay to sell them or Apple wqould shut it down:-

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NPZH661/?tag=macforums0e4-20