How to setup macbook 2010 as new

[Noetics]

Hello folks

Yesterday I bought an old macbook from one of my partners friends, its in awesome condition and I am planning on putting 8GB of ram in and a 256GB Kingston SSD to give it some extra power.

However, I hit my first hurdle when I tried to set it up as a new mac.

When I boot up, it goes straight into recovery, and gives me four options.

Restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup.
Verify and repair connected drives using Disk Utility.
Check your Internet connection or get help online using Safari.
Install or reinstall OS X.

I've tried the second option, erasing the hard drive completely, and then the fourth option of reinstalling OS X but it keeps prompting me for an apple id and password, and when i provide it with mine it gives an error message 'this item is temporarily unavailable'.

Can anyone help? Do I need to return it to the previous owner and ask her to wipe it properly, or is there a work around where I can set this up for a new owner without going back to her?

Cheers
Jim

 

[Weaselboy]

You are in a bit of a pickle here. I assume you never purchased Mavericks in the App Store with your AppleID. That is why it won't let you use your AppleID to download it.

Now that you have erased the OS, there is no way for your to login to the App Store to purchase the OS to get the download.

Do you have access to another Mac where you can get Yosemite free from the App Store and DL it then make a USB key installer you could use on the MacBook to format and install Yosemite? Follow this.

An option that might work is to use Internet recovery. Depending on when in 2010 that Mac was made, it may work. See this.

Hold command-option-r (all three at once) when booting. You will be prompted for your wifi info then you will get a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads and launches. From there use Disk Util to erase the drive and click reinstall OS X. Hopefully this will get you Lion free without an AppleID.

 

[sharon22]

One word: Internet recovery.
Otherwise, you gotta give the old owner a jingle, grovel alot, beg them to let you use their install software...

 

[Noetics]

Managed to resolve this by using the snow leopard install disks it came with - phew!

Then I updated to OS to Yosemite, runs like a dream.

Cheers
Jim