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Undo Delete

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi.

I recently bought a second-hand MacBook Pro (5,5 - Mid 2009) which came with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The previous owner had upgraded it to 10.6.

The previous owner had changed a lot of settings and installed many programs, and I would like to restore all the settings to default and delete all of his programs.

Would it be possible to do that without reinstalling OS X? The Mac came with an install disk for OS X 10.5 Leopard.
 
You may want to reinstall, although you may be able to get away with creating a new user, switching to that, and deleting the old one, then going through and getting rid of apps you don't want.
 
Thank you for replying so quickly.

I'd rather not reinstall OS X as the current installed OS is 10.6, and I don't want to install 10.5. I only have the 10.5 disk that came with the MacBook Pro.

I will try to use the new user method.
 
or simply delete the unwanted programs and change the settings to your own liking 😛
 
Thank you for replying so quickly.

I'd rather not reinstall OS X as the current installed OS is 10.6, and I don't want to install 10.5. I only have the 10.5 disk that came with the MacBook Pro.

I will try to use the new user method.

It only $30 to buy snow leopard so it's not a huge investment.
 
No reinstall is required. Simple set up a new admin account (make sure it is admin). Then login into that new account. Go back to the account panel in system preferences where you set up the new account and delete the old account. You will be given options on what to do with that accounts data. Select delete and wait. It can take some time to delete the data depending on hoe big the accounts data is and then done.

OS X very rarely needs to be reinstalled, this is a windows world solution. Sometimes a reinstall can help but very rarely.
 
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