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Best Method for Resetting an Air Prior to Sale
- Thread starter Scarpad
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restart and hold alt while you restart, select reinstall OSX Lion. It will reinstall the OS and delete all of your data, next time you startup it will be exactly like when you bought the computer.
Then I guess its lying when it warns that installing to that drive will erase its contents.
There is another option to restore from time machine if you want to retain your data...but reinstalling the OS will wipe your data...I have done it...it works.
This has all you the information you need.
http://hivelogic.com/articles/how-to-prepare-a-mac-for-sale/
http://hivelogic.com/articles/how-to-prepare-a-mac-for-sale/
That article is from 2008! In 2012 just log into recovery and reinstall Lion! Its that simple!!!
Hmmm, I would create a new user "User" or whatever, with admin rights. Restart and log in as the new user then delete the account you used as your previous main user. All you files and folders should be gone after that. If you have apps you need to delete then delete them in the usual way.
Stewart
Again, when you select re-install Lion it will delete EVERYTHING. If you want to restore your settings and prefs you can use migration assistant with a time machine, but if you don't you will be back to factory.
If you are seriously that paranoid, you can just go into disk utility from inside the recovery partition and format the drive prior to installation.
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This is why I always capture an image of the base OS and save to an external drive, and create a bootable partition on an external drive. When I want to get rid of a machine, I boot off the external, zero out the drive, and then use Disk Utility to reinstall the base OS. A bit of overkill, but its the way I was taught long ago, and its a practice I'll continue to follow.