Help... do I have Snow Leopard?

[Kaela]

Hello
I need help... I bought a white mac (I dont know the difference between an imac and a mac pro, so I am not sure what it was) and I took it to a guy who fixed it all up for me with the operating system and programs. That was good, then after a couple years, the hard drive crashed. I ended up selling it for parts, and bought a used one from kijiji.ca. The used one I bought is a metal one, which I think is a newer one? It is a 24 inch. I got it from the guy, and tried reformatting it when I got it, and it wouldnt work, so the same guy who fixed up my white one a few years back came over and tried to do it for me. He showed me what was wrong, it was a fatal hard drive error (I think jackass who sold it to me knew something was wrong and didnt say anything.) So a few months have gone by, and I finally got a new hard drive. I followed a youtube video and replaced it myself. It is a 1 terabyte hard drive. Now the computer boots up fine, etc, it was the hard drive. I put in the 2 disks that the computer came with, disk one loaded for a while, then it prompted me to put disk 2 in, and everything looks fine. My boyfriends brother who is sort of techie said that it looks like a super old version of Snow Leopard or something. So I was looking at more videos rtying to figure out how I can get a newer version, and it looks like I might have something called Tiger? I clicked the apple icon, and then clicked about this mac, and it says 10.4.11... from what I understand this is Tiger. I want to know what exactly do I have? Also, is my computer a piece of garbage? Can I get Snow Leopard, or better yet Mountain Lion? I just want to get something decent on my computer so I can start using it. Also, can I start transferring stuff from my external to my mac? Or am I going to lose it all off the mac when I figure out how to install Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion?
Thank so much for your help

 

[justperry]

1. Click on the apple Menu and select "About This mac", then click on "More Info", a program called system profiler will open and it will tell you the model you have under model Idintifier.

Or

2. On the outside of the computer there should be a tag somewhere, look for it.

Report back here which Model you have.

 

[talmy]

10.4 is Tiger. Since your iMac came with that it would be a mid 2007 model so would be capable of running Mountain Lion. The "official" way to go is to first upgrade to Snow Leopard and then buy Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store. However Snow Leopard is discontinued. You might be able to find (or I would slyly suggest "borrow") a copy to perform the upgrade. A more direct approach is to know someone who is running Snow Leopard or later and use their computer to buy a copy of Mountain Lion. The installer can be copied to a USB flash drive and used to install Mountain Lion on your system.

You will have to manually copy the files from the old drive as Migration Utility won't migrate from OS X versions that disparate.

 

[Kaela]

Does iMac7,1 make sense?

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10.4 is Tiger. Since your iMac came with that it would be a mid 2007 model so would be capable of running Mountain Lion. The "official" way to go is to first upgrade to Snow Leopard and then buy Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store. However Snow Leopard is discontinued. You might be able to find (or I would slyly suggest "borrow") a copy to perform the upgrade. A more direct approach is to know someone who is running Snow Leopard or later and use their computer to buy a copy of Mountain Lion. The installer can be copied to a USB flash drive and used to install Mountain Lion on your system.

You will have to manually copy the files from the old drive as Migration Utility won't migrate from OS X versions that disparate.

The guy who I bought it from did say it was a 2007 model. So I need to find someone who has an old copy of Snow Leopard, install that, then find someone with Snow Leopard or later, and use there computer to buy Mountain Lion? The only person I know who has a mac is my boyfriends brother, and he already bought Mountain Lion. Could I buy it from his computer still?

 

[talmy]

Does iMac7,1 make sense?

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The guy who I bought it from did say it was a 2007 model. So I need to find someone who has an old copy of Snow Leopard, install that, then find someone with Snow Leopard or later, and use there computer to buy Mountain Lion? The only person I know who has a mac is my boyfriends brother, and he already bought Mountain Lion. Could I buy it from his computer still?

iMac 7,1 is indeed the mid 2007 model.

Edited to add: you probably want to make sure you have 4GB of RAM. These originally came with as little as 1GB which isn't enough.

I gave two approaches, the first using installing Snow Leopard first. You don't need that. Use your bfb's computer -- have him set up an account temporarily for you. Go to the Mac App Store and purchase a copy of Mountain Lion. Copy it to a USB flash drive (must be 8GB or larger) using techniques easily searched for with Google, I won't list the steps here. Then you can use that to install Mountain Lion on your system.

 

[Kaela]

iMac 7,1 is indeed the mid 2007 model.

Edited to add: you probably want to make sure you have 4GB of RAM. These originally came with as little as 1GB which isn't enough.

I gave two approaches, the first using installing Snow Leopard first. You don't need that. Use your bfb's computer -- have him set up an account temporarily for you. Go to the Mac App Store and purchase a copy of Mountain Lion. Copy it to a USB flash drive (must be 8GB or larger) using techniques easily searched for with Google, I won't list the steps here. Then you can use that to install Mountain Lion on your system.

Thank you for your help. It says I have 3gb or ram, is that ok? My boyfriends brother said that they only come with 2, so someone must have added 1. Is that right?

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iMac 7,1 is indeed the mid 2007 model.

Edited to add: you probably want to make sure you have 4GB of RAM. These originally came with as little as 1GB which isn't enough.

I gave two approaches, the first using installing Snow Leopard first. You don't need that. Use your bfb's computer -- have him set up an account temporarily for you. Go to the Mac App Store and purchase a copy of Mountain Lion. Copy it to a USB flash drive (must be 8GB or larger) using techniques easily searched for with Google, I won't list the steps here. Then you can use that to install Mountain Lion on your system.

I am also wondering, so I can borrow a copy of Snow Leopard from someone and run that too? I am debating on whether or not I will get Mountain Lion. Are there different versions of Snow Leopard? Incase I decide to go with it? Do I need a certain version since my computer is older?

 

[Designer Dale]

Does iMac7,1 make sense?

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The guy who I bought it from did say it was a 2007 model. So I need to find someone who has an old copy of Snow Leopard, install that, then find someone with Snow Leopard or later, and use there computer to buy Mountain Lion? The only person I know who has a mac is my boyfriends brother, and he already bought Mountain Lion. Could I buy it from his computer still?

I did a search on the identifier iMac7,1 on EveryMac.com and came up with the list in the link below. You can use it to find your machine and all the relevant technical info you need.

Going to your brothers friend and getting his original install disk is a good idea. It's probably Snow Leopard. Install that on your computer and then find the free update to 10.6.8 by selecting Software Update from the Apple Menu. You will then be ready to buy Mountain Lion.

Make sure your apps are comparable with ML before you go and do this, though. I had to upgrade my Adobe apps to CSS 6 before I could get ML to run on my '08 MacBook Pro.

For a casual user with an older system, Snow Leopard will do just fine and avoid any technical headaches.

IMac7,1

Keep is posted.

Dale

EDIT: your computer maxes out at 6 GB of ram. I think it has two slots, so that's one 2 and one 4 GB.

Here's a link to other World Computing