Help Please - used mac, no restore, os disc

[Acclaim99]

My G/F bought a used Mac book, it didn't come with a restore/software cd or anything.

Tell me if this would work..
If I get a OS .dmg file - of course its like 6gb, which means I can't burn or put it on any USB sticks I have.

But, can I put it on my iphone (one of those iphone->flash programs), and rum the dmg file off of it, and would it wipe her mac clean?

Im a pc person, so its hard to figure this out.

Is there any other way.. thanks

 

[Mal]

You can't boot from a .dmg. It has to be a disk (whether flash, HDD, or optical). Your best bet (assuming this is an Intel Mac) is to go buy a copy of Snow Leopard ($30) and use that to wipe it clean.

jW

 

[MacHamster68]

just go back to the seller and ask him for the os and ilife disc's which come with every Mac , so a used Mac without disc's for the operating system and apps installed is just not complete , and the amount of people who cant find them any more and selling them a week later to compensate any losses (ebay and paypal fees )is high , even higher is the amount of people who sell the Mac's with pre installed software from torrent sites to fool people to spend more money

i have a simple rule when i buy a Mac i only buy Mac's that are exactly like they left the factory in the box , means with all documents and install discs of any software that might be installed , wear and tear is accepted but a not complete Mac is simply worthless to me
adds that state disc not included or other excuses why there are 1000's of dollars worth of software on but not even a prove that its legitimate i declare that Mac simple as not worth more then the cost of the add as you need to add the cost of getting all the software on disc to make it legit and that can get really expensive, depending on the software it will really go into the 1000's

so if you cannot get anything from the seller get snow leopard disc from apple, ilife from apple , not that expensive really but still it adds to the cost, so a " good deal "can become more of a average price

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Its possible to reset the user data easily enough without wiping the Mac but if you want a really clean install then you need a bootable OS. Buying Snow Leopard is one solution, but if you have a .dmg already then you could also just buy an 8GB USB stick and restore the image to that to make it bootable.

I maintain Leopard, Snow Leopard and SL Server on a firewire HDD because its far more convenient and actually a damn sight faster to install.
When I worked in an AASP I had a drive with 16 partitions containing various diagnostic images for different Macs. I would have had more if Disk Utility had allowed.

For those who are absolute sticklers for rules, buying a Mac with installed apps on it would get very expensive but only if you kept them. Deleting them is always an option. As for the OS, every Mac comes with an OS license inferred. Apple don't really care where you get your install from as long as its the version that shipped. They do of course expect you to pay for upgrades. I suspect you are already thinking this and have maybe torrented your 6GB image? Apple either won't care or won't ever find out about this. They have never bothered to put license keys on Mac OS except server.

If you pay the labour charge, they will put the original OS back on your drive for you if needed but Snow Leopard is probably cheaper than a labour charge.

 

[old-wiz]

Apple will sell you the original restore disks for a small fee.