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Loafmanuk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 14, 2009
3
0
Hi all, I'm afraid I'm new to Macs, so I may just be dumb, but I have spent about 8 hours so far trying to install OS X. I bought a sencond hand Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook which came with OS discs etc. but everything was password protected and I couldn't do anything with it. I formatted the hard drive (this was the main mistake I think). Now when I put the OS X 10.4.10 disc in and hold down the alt/option button I see a picture of a disc on the screen, with Mac OS X etc written under it and an arrow pointing up. I click on the arrow and the machine just reboots. I just saw that holding down 'D' while powering up runs diagnostics. When I do this it says it's not for this machine. Have I been done? And given the wrong discs for this machine? If so is there a workaround?

I really appreciate any help, as I have spent a lot of money on this. Thanks in advance.
 
How did you manage to reformat the drive? If you couldn't log in before you must have booted up through holding down c or option with the disk in. I cannot fathom why this would no longer work to boot from the OS disk.
 
Maybe the discs you received were not the original ones that came with the computer (and they're the type that only works with specific computers?)
 
Hi all, I formatted it with a windows based utility disc. I deleted all partitions (Wish I hadn't now of course). I am a very capable PC user and have no problem building/upgrading PC's and installing OS's on PCs.

I phoned the second hand shop earlier and they said it had a 7 day warranty, which has now expired (I've had it 9 days) and they don't want to know. I just hadn't used it until now.

I may have to buy a retail version of OS X, assuming of course it will work! Anyone know if that will work?

Thanks everyone for the replies!
 
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