Just picked up a new iMac, need help resetting quickly please.

[DustyJoe]

I literally, just got home and plugged it in..

It currently has 10.8.2 on it, I'm wanting to erase all of the previous person's settings, data and such and don't know how!

Will paying the $19.99 from the app store, re downloading the OS and re-installing allow me to do a clean wipe?

I have a 27" i7, that is the previous version just before the new thin one... No restore discs came with..

Please advise my friends,
Thanks!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

No Mac coming with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has physical restore media included.

OS X: About OS X Recovery

If you want to make a bootable installation medium, you can follow these steps:

• Lion DiskMaker

• Create bootable installation medium for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
​

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Have you looked at these guides yet on how to "reset" the Mac??

• How to Clean Install OS X Mountain Lion
• How to Do a Clean Install of OS X Mountain Lion

 

[Blaine]

I hope you didn't steal it. This seems fishy...

 

[DustyJoe]

It didn't come with lion on it to begin with, not sure what version..

 

[hobbbz]

Do you want it started from scratch or do you want just a fresh user with no preferences set?

 

[DustyJoe]

I was following a walkthru I found but ended up formatting my main drive and it only boots to the osx utilities screen now ;(

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I was hoping to reset it back to like I just pulled it out of the box new, which whatever version of osx it had on it.

 

[rkaufmann87]

I was following a walkthru I found but ended up formatting my main drive and it only boots to the osx utilities screen now ;(

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I was hoping to reset it back to like I just pulled it out of the box new, which whatever version of osx it had on it.

Contact the seller and ask what version of OS X was installed when he bought it, then request the original Install Discs. If they aren't available then go to Apple's online store and purchase a license of Snow Leopard. Then format and do a fresh install, update the system to 10.6.8 then purchase Mt. Lion from the Mac App Store. Total investment will be about $40 ($20 for SL and $20 for ML) Of course ensure the system has enough RAM to support ML, it should have a minimum of 4GB.

 

[DustyJoe]

I fixed it last night, after hours of pulling my hair out..

I ended up loading VMWare on my PC and running OSX lion in a virtual machine in order to access the app store and purchase mountain lion with my apple id..

Thanks fellas!

 

[50548]

I hope you didn't steal it. This seems fishy...

I had the same impression.