return MBP to factory settings

[lken37]

I purchased a MacBook Pro from Ebay. Serial Number W800523H7XJ. It is a beautiful machine but is at times slow and locks up. The reason I bought this particular machine is that it was loaded with everything you can imagine, like photoshop, about 4 or 5 kinds of photo and movie versions. Things I thought I couldn't live without. Well have found I don't need them and want to put this back to out of the box ready. It has OS X 10.8.2 and when I tried to reboot using the command-r function of course I did not have the password that the previous owner used to upgrade. Am guessing that this came with Snow Leopard.
Bottom line is can I reboot to factory settings without buying a disk? or is that even possible?

Thanks,
Ken

 

[krravi]

If it originally had SL and then was upgrade to Lion, ask the previous owner if he has the downloaded file of Lion or the SL disk. You can make a bootable disk out of it once you have it.

Check your application folder for the downloaded copy. If its there then you got lucky.

If not and you have no way to contact the previous owner then I am afraid you have to go to app store and purchase lion again on your account.

Then there are sites that help you burn that downloaded app into a USB stick or a DVD for a fresh install. Just google it.

 

[Weaselboy]

Bottom line is can I reboot to factory settings without buying a disk? or is that even possible?

At his point your options are call Apple and buy a Snow Leopard DVD, or buy yourself Mountain Lion from the App Store. If it were me, I would just spend the $20 on Mountain Lion and make myself a USB key installer.

Then just option key boot to the USB key and erase the drive with Disk Utility and install the OS. This will of course wipe any apps now on there.