iMac newbie trying to reinstall Snow Leopard

[newmacuser5]

Hi,

I recently got a pre-owned iMac with the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 installed on it. It has a user plus guest account. The person who gave it to me doesn't remember the password. I tried booting from the disk that came with the mac to access the disk utility to reinstall the operating system. I tried the option key and also C key at the start up but it took me to login screen instead of the disk utility. I am using a wireless keyboard that came with the mac. I also tried a non-mac USB keyboard and hit option key but it didn't work either. I don't want to invest in USB Mac keyboard without knowing if that would work for me. Please help me to reinstall and use this Mac. Thanks.

 

[MacOG728893]

It's the DVD that shipped with the iMac originally or image copy of 10.6?

 

[newmacuser5]

I didn't get the DVD so I bought a new 10.6.3 from apple. The system currently has 10.6.0 I believe.

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Also, from the guest account when I insert the DVD, it does get recognized and I can access it. But in order to format the HDD and reinstall the fresh OS, it asks me to reboot and then access the DVD from there. It's at the reboot I can't boot from that DVD. I tried hitting option key and c key from a wireless keyboard. May be it's because the keyboard is not connected at the time of the boot???

 

[Eithanius]

I didn't get the DVD so I bought a new 10.6.3 from apple. The system currently has 10.6.0 I believe.

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Also, from the guest account when I insert the DVD, it does get recognized and I can access it. But in order to format the HDD and reinstall the fresh OS, it asks me to reboot and then access the DVD from there. It's at the reboot I can't boot from that DVD. I tried hitting option key and c key from a wireless keyboard. May be it's because the keyboard is not connected at the time of the boot???

Can you read the disk from System Preferences > Startup Disk, and restart to the disc there...?