Handing down Macbook to a friend

[east1999]

Hi guys,

I just got a new MBA 13" 2015 for myself and I want to give my old MBP to a friend.

I started by wiping the disk with the recovery partition, but when I tried to reinstall OSX El Capitan with his Apple ID, I got a "this item is unavailable" error.

I then switched to Internet Recovery, which uses Lion, and tried to install OSX from there, but it still asked for an Apple ID, and his didn't work. He's using an Apple ID account from iTunes.

At the moment I believe that, because the original OS was Snow Leopard, I have to reinstall OSX from a DVD and create his account anew. Is that right?

I think I can install Lion with my Apple ID and then try to sign in all services with my friend's ID, but I'd prefer to hand down a "factory settings" computer.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I haven't run into that issue but I suppose, since the upgrades are done through the App Store, that the Recovery partition is somehow tied to the account that did the upgrade.

If you start from complete scratch with the Snow Leopard DVD, completely erase the hard drive and install/upgrade SL up to 10.6.8 then you or he should be able to associate the App Store app with his current Apple ID.