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Selling iMac, which OS do I leave on?

richard13

richard13

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 1, 2008
1,115
975
Odessa, FL
I am planning to buy a new iMac soon and will be selling my existing one. That one is mid-2010 and came with Snow Leopard. I have since upgraded to Lion and then Mountain Lion through the App Store.

Should I clean install and just put Snow Leopard on it? Or can I put Mountain Lion back on?

If I put Mountain Lion on it, will it leave some sort of connection to my Apple ID?

Which would you do, or have done?

Thanks!
 
Mountain Lion has internet recovery. Use it to restore with the latest software. It's what I did.
 
richard13 said:
I am planning to buy a new iMac soon and will be selling my existing one. That one is mid-2010 and came with Snow Leopard. I have since upgraded to Lion and then Mountain Lion through the App Store.

Should I clean install and just put Snow Leopard on it? Or can I put Mountain Lion back on?

If I put Mountain Lion on it, will it leave some sort of connection to my Apple ID?

Which would you do, or have done?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Use the restore discs. Any version of OS X you need to use your Apple ID to install is licensed to you. Let them just buy Mountain Lion themselves or at this point maybe they should wait for Mavericks.
 
I always just leave my machines in a ready to install state...demonstrate, erase, then give the buyer any media that came with the Mac.

Remember to de-authorise the machine from iTunes too.
 
Thanks guys for the advice. I called up Apple today and they said I could do either but if I left Mountain Lion they would be prompted for my credentials at which point they'd have to get their own copy (I'm not sharing that). :)

It seems messy to go that way though so I'll just install from media and tell them to buy their own Mountain Lion download.

This exercise has me wondering what will happen on the next iMac upgrade. Now that there's no media in the box nor Super Drive in the computer. My guess is that the OS will come on a recovery partition but I'm surely going to upgrade that OS. I wonder if there will be a way to backup the recovery partition somehow to get the system back to the original condition.
 
Macman45 said:
I always just leave my machines in a ready to install state...demonstrate, erase, then give the buyer any media that came with the Mac.

Remember to de-authorise the machine from iTunes too.
Click to expand...

If you do a erase of the drive you should still de-authorise the machine from iTunes too ? how?
 
Serban said:
If you do a erase of the drive you should still de-authorise the machine from iTunes too ? how?
Click to expand...

I think the only way to de-authorize once you've erased the drive is to reset your account (which will de-authorize all your devices). Last I checked you can do this once a year.
 
richard13 said:
I think the only way to de-authorize once you've erased the drive is to reset your account (which will de-authorize all your devices). Last I checked you can do this once a year.
Click to expand...

so if you erase the hard drive there are still personal information?? i don't think so, the hard drive have been erased
 
Guess it is better to deauthorize your Mac from iTunes before erasing it and reinstall the original OS (whatever it is)
 
Serban said:
so if you erase the hard drive there are still personal information?? i don't think so, the hard drive have been erased
Click to expand...

No, but one of your 5 available slots for authorized iTunes purchases is locked on a computer that doesn't exist. Which is why you should deauthorize, then reinstall
 
richard13 said:
...
This exercise has me wondering what will happen on the next iMac upgrade. Now that there's no media in the box nor Super Drive in the computer. My guess is that the OS will come on a recovery partition but I'm surely going to upgrade that OS. I wonder if there will be a way to backup the recovery partition somehow to get the system back to the original condition.
Click to expand...
For computers that ship with Lion or later you can boot via Internet Recovery (use Command+Option+R at boot to force it into Internet Recovery) instead of the Recovery Partition and install the OS the computer came with without having to give it an Apple ID.
 
Bear said:
For computers that ship with Lion or later you can boot via Internet Recovery (use Command+Option+R at boot to force it into Internet Recovery) instead of the Recovery Partition and install the OS the computer came with without having to give it an Apple ID.
Click to expand...

Ah, excellent. Thank you!
 
richard13 said:
Ah, excellent. Thank you!
Click to expand...

Bear is right on target there... but just a word of clarification based on your earlier comment. The OS is not on that recovery partition like you may be used to on some Windows machines. The recovery partition is just a 650MB partition with some tools that allow you to download the actual OS (4.7GB) from Apple's servers.
 
If you have a mid-2010, iMac, it is not as easy as folks suggest. I just got a new iMac and gave mine to a friend as a gift. It is not that easy because I upgraded to Lion and ML, which puts some constraints on backward restoration.

I had to use the following steps:

1-Boot using Command-R
2-Select Disk Utility and do a secure erase.
3-Insert the SL install Disk. Hold down the D Key
4-Select Disk Utility again and re-erase the disk
5-Reload SL and create an Account
6-Install applications from the applications DVD.

Hope this helps.

Jay
 
jaybar said:
If you have a mid-2010, iMac, it is not as easy as folks suggest. I just got a new iMac and gave mine to a friend as a gift. It is not that easy because I upgraded to Lion and ML, which puts some constraints on backward restoration.

I had to use the following steps:

1-Boot using Command-R
2-Select Disk Utility and do a secure erase.
3-Insert the SL install Disk. Hold down the D Key
4-Select Disk Utility again and re-erase the disk
5-Reload SL and create an Account
6-Install applications from the applications DVD.

Hope this helps.

Jay
Click to expand...

Why would you need to do 1 and 2? You can just D boot to the SL disk and erase the disk and reinstall.
 
I was not able to do that. I got error messages when I tried to just use the SL install disk.

Jay
 
Weaselboy said:
Bear is right on target there... but just a word of clarification based on your earlier comment. The OS is not on that recovery partition like you may be used to on some Windows machines. The recovery partition is just a 650MB partition with some tools that allow you to download the actual OS (4.7GB) from Apple's servers.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Thank you Weaselboy.
 
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