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Bought MacBook Air from friend...stuck on starting out

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donl1150

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 13, 2014
27
4
I just bought a 2011 MacBook Air from a friend. When I start it up, it boots to a screen with a eBay icon and a Guest User icon. I can't get to the desktop. The eBay icon is password protected and the Guest user allows me to boot only into Safari to surf the web.

How can I get it to boot to the normal start screen? I presume I could do a factory reset but then I would lose the Microsoft Office for Mac that she bought and installed. Any thoughts?
 
blueroom

blueroom

macrumors 603
Feb 15, 2009
6,381
26
Toronto, Canada
Always do a reformat and reinstall when you buy a used computer, else you're asking for all sorts of problems.

Office wasn't hers to give you unless she included the product key.
 
S

Serban

Suspended
Jan 8, 2013
5,159
928
ask your friend for password or meet with him to remove it.
Or reinstall from fresh
 
gnasher729

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
donl1150 said:
I just bought a 2011 MacBook Air from a friend. When I start it up, it boots to a screen with a eBay icon and a Guest User icon. I can't get to the desktop. The eBay icon is password protected and the Guest user allows me to boot only into Safari to surf the web.

How can I get it to boot to the normal start screen? I presume I could do a factory reset but then I would lose the Microsoft Office for Mac that she bought and installed. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Take the MBA back to the friend, and ask him or her to change the password to 1234. Then you take it home and change the password to whatever you want.

Now since that friend left the password unchanged, I could imagine that the hard drive is full with the friend's personal data. So when the password gets changed, advice them to make sure that all personal data is gone.
 
alphaod

alphaod

macrumors Core
Feb 9, 2008
22,183
1,245
NYC
Reinstall the OS and ask you friend to reinstall Office.

Or buy your own copy.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,137
15,600
California
donl1150 said:
I just bought a 2011 MacBook Air from a friend. When I start it up, it boots to a screen with a eBay icon and a Guest User icon. I can't get to the desktop. The eBay icon is password protected and the Guest user allows me to boot only into Safari to surf the web.

How can I get it to boot to the normal start screen? I presume I could do a factory reset but then I would lose the Microsoft Office for Mac that she bought and installed. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Just follow this to reset the password on the eBay labelled account to whatever you want.
 
C

coldjeanzzz

macrumors 6502a
Nov 4, 2012
655
17
Why are you guys helping out a thief? Who would be stupid enough to buy a laptop without making sure it wasn't password protected and if this person actually your "friend" they could easily change the pw for you
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,137
15,600
California
coldjeanzzz said:
Why are you guys helping out a thief? Who would be stupid enough to buy a laptop without making sure it wasn't password protected and if this person actually your "friend" they could easily change the pw for you
Click to expand...

Hmm... let's see. Maybe we are not ready to jump to conclusions and call someone a thief without having all the information.
 
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