Need to reinstall Leopord on a 2006 Mac mini and have no factory discs

[minerval333]

Hi, I purchased it off Ebay and it only came with a fresh install of Leopard. No factory disks. I want to reinstall the OS. I would like to be clear about what software I need to purchase in order to have do a clean and install. It just seems to easy to pay 29 dollars for leopard and just re install that. I keep seeing directions to re install the original software first and then put leopard after that. Since this is a 2006. I am sure Leopard is not the original OS.

I really appreciate some instruction.

Thanks in advance

 

[benwiggy]

Leopard (10.5) was released in autumn 2007. Your 2006 Mini came with Tiger (10.4).
It's a shame when people sell Macs without the installer disks for the OS. It leaves you with no way of reinstalling the OS, and it's contrary to the licence.
That's changed with newer Macs now we have the Recovery Partition, but I digress.

You need to buy an installer disk. That either means getting a Leopard disk from eBay (make sure it's a RETAIL disk, not a bundled disk from a different model as that won't work).

You can still buy Snow Leopard (10.6) from Apple on a disk, and it's quite cheap. That will run fine on your Mac, and will keep you a bit more up-to-date.

You are wise to reinstall after buying a secondhand Mac. After that, you shouldn't need to reinstall unless something goes very wrong, but it's good to have the disk for trouble-shooting.

 

[minerval333]

Thank you Benwiggy.

You can still buy Snow Leopard (10.6) from Apple on a disk, and it's quite cheap. That will run fine on your Mac, and will keep you a bit more up-to-date.

Awesome. Is it ok that I ordered Snow leopard 10.6.3? It was 29 dollars at Amazon. Please let me know because I can still cancel and order 10.6.

I ordered 10.6.3 because I was told I can get to 10.6.8 from there. That was what was actually on it when I got it. I said leopard in my OP, but I meant to say Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Thanks again for the response

 

[Weaselboy]

Awesome. Is it ok that I ordered Snow leopard 10.6.3? It was 29 dollars at Amazon. Please let me know because I can still cancel and order 10.6.

I ordered 10.6.3 because I was told I can get to 10.6.8 from there. That was what was actually on it when I got it. I said leopard in my OP, but I meant to say Snow Leopard 10.6.8

That will work fine. Just run software update after the install and it will update you to 10.6.8.

 

[minerval333]

That is really great to hear. I was afraid that 29 dollars was too good to be true