Hello everyone!
I wonder if anyone can help with this problem. Quite a long story, I will start at the beginning...
In 2007, I bought a 2007 white Macbook, which came with the grey OSX 10.4 install disks.
In 2016, having bought a new Macbook Pro, and as I was going to work overseas, I decided to sell the white Macbook, which I did, on eBay.
For the new owner, I took the machine to an Apple Store, and they performed a clean install of OSX 10.6, so I shipped the Macbook without any user profiles, and moved away.
I later heard from the buyer, who wanted to return the machine. I asked him to send it back to my father's house, as I was abroad, and asked my father to check that it was working, which he did, and it was. I then refunded the purchase price and heard no more about it.
Recently, I have decided that this machine would still be useful to have around, so on a trip home I have dug it out to have a look at it. Everything is fine, except that the buyer in 2016 set up a user profile, and I don't have the password.
Last week, I took the Macbook to an Apple Store to see if they could help. It turns out that the machine is no longer supported; however, a staff member at the Apple Store in my father's city agreed to sort it out.
Unfortunately, I had to leave town again, and for whatever reason, the member of Apple staff had not finished re-installing the software. When I got it home, it was booting into Recovery Mode only.
Going through my things, I happened on the original grey 10.4 OSX install disks. After a small amount of research, I realised that I might be able to boot the machine from the install disks, and re-install a clean operating system from there.
I also realised that the optical disk drive in the white Macbook has not functioned well for many years, though it does work *somewhat*.
So, I first tried to boot from the install disk in an external optical disk drive, trying holding down 'option' and 'C' at startup. This did not work.
I then tried to do the same with the install disc in the onboard optical disc drive, and to my surprise, it booted from the install disc with 'C' held down at startup.
So, using the installer, I tried to install the OS. However, at the point where the installer asks me to select a drive to install the OS on, no disks showed up in the installer window.
After some more research, I realised that the hidden recovery partition needed to be removed, so I exited the installer, and opened Disk Utility. I attempted to partition the HD, selecting '1 partition' and 'GUID'. However, Disk Utility returns an 'input/output error' every time.
So, reasoning that perhaps Disk Utility in recovery mode might work better, I attempted to reboot the machine without holding down 'C', so that it would boot into the recovery mode it was booting into before I booted from the install disk.
Now, no matter what happens, the machine will only boot from the install disk in the optical drive, and I cannot remove the disk, I assume because if the machine is booting from the disk in the drive, there is no way for me to remove it.
My first question would be, is there any way for me to get back to the position I was in, where the machine was booting in recovery mode without the install disk? Then I could possibly partition the drive correctly, and then install the OS from the install disks.
A second question would be, if not, what is the next step?
Many thanks!
I wonder if anyone can help with this problem. Quite a long story, I will start at the beginning...
In 2007, I bought a 2007 white Macbook, which came with the grey OSX 10.4 install disks.
In 2016, having bought a new Macbook Pro, and as I was going to work overseas, I decided to sell the white Macbook, which I did, on eBay.
For the new owner, I took the machine to an Apple Store, and they performed a clean install of OSX 10.6, so I shipped the Macbook without any user profiles, and moved away.
I later heard from the buyer, who wanted to return the machine. I asked him to send it back to my father's house, as I was abroad, and asked my father to check that it was working, which he did, and it was. I then refunded the purchase price and heard no more about it.
Recently, I have decided that this machine would still be useful to have around, so on a trip home I have dug it out to have a look at it. Everything is fine, except that the buyer in 2016 set up a user profile, and I don't have the password.
Last week, I took the Macbook to an Apple Store to see if they could help. It turns out that the machine is no longer supported; however, a staff member at the Apple Store in my father's city agreed to sort it out.
Unfortunately, I had to leave town again, and for whatever reason, the member of Apple staff had not finished re-installing the software. When I got it home, it was booting into Recovery Mode only.
Going through my things, I happened on the original grey 10.4 OSX install disks. After a small amount of research, I realised that I might be able to boot the machine from the install disks, and re-install a clean operating system from there.
I also realised that the optical disk drive in the white Macbook has not functioned well for many years, though it does work *somewhat*.
So, I first tried to boot from the install disk in an external optical disk drive, trying holding down 'option' and 'C' at startup. This did not work.
I then tried to do the same with the install disc in the onboard optical disc drive, and to my surprise, it booted from the install disc with 'C' held down at startup.
So, using the installer, I tried to install the OS. However, at the point where the installer asks me to select a drive to install the OS on, no disks showed up in the installer window.
After some more research, I realised that the hidden recovery partition needed to be removed, so I exited the installer, and opened Disk Utility. I attempted to partition the HD, selecting '1 partition' and 'GUID'. However, Disk Utility returns an 'input/output error' every time.
So, reasoning that perhaps Disk Utility in recovery mode might work better, I attempted to reboot the machine without holding down 'C', so that it would boot into the recovery mode it was booting into before I booted from the install disk.
Now, no matter what happens, the machine will only boot from the install disk in the optical drive, and I cannot remove the disk, I assume because if the machine is booting from the disk in the drive, there is no way for me to remove it.
My first question would be, is there any way for me to get back to the position I was in, where the machine was booting in recovery mode without the install disk? Then I could possibly partition the drive correctly, and then install the OS from the install disks.
A second question would be, if not, what is the next step?
Many thanks!