reinstalling OS to MacBook

[willyb65]

Hello everyone,

I have been a Mac user for just over a year now and love it. Of course this also means people think I know a lot about them. I know a bit but am still learning a lot daily. Someone I know recently bought a MacBook Pro. They were all pumped to install xp on it with boot camp. He partitioned the disk in half giving each 75 gigs. He started boot camp but it rebooted and stayed on the cursor. I was able to start it up and look at the HD but all that showed up was one saying windows. We were able to do a reinstall but it isn't the same as it was when he purchased it.
my question is how does one return the machine to the way it came? I know there was a boot camp partition and an operating one as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[kryptonianjorel]

So he bought this computer used?

Whenever you buy a used computer, you should always wipe it clean. Insert the leopard DVD and use disk utility to delete the partitions and format the hard drive as 1 big drive to reinstall OSX. Once you do that, the run the bootcamp utility to set up the bootcamp drive

 

[willyb65]

no he bought it new but when he went to format the drive (after it messed up) he said he couldn't get the drive fully formatted. I'm seeing him next week so wanted to have a bit of proper procedure before I went. Thanks.

 

[Richard1028]

You will need to boot from the install disk and run, "Disk Utility".

Remove that bootcamp partition so that everything is one single drive again.

Then, reformat and install OSX