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So I bought a macbook pro on craigslist...

H

honkeykong

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 17, 2012
11
0
It was working great with Snow Leopard and still had all of the guys info on it. A fresh install of Lion a few hours later locks it with the message, "Hey user something already has this registered" then it was remote locked.

I took it to the police and the serial number didn't come up in any stolen merchandise databases. They also called Apple and they said that it was not reported and suggested I go to an Apple store to see what they could do.

The answer is - nothing really. They were not allowed to notify the original owner. He couldn't reset the firmware password - He said the only way to bypass it would be to replace the logic board for $450. Then he also couldn't give me any assurance that whomever remote locked the system couldn't do it again.

So here I am with my $600 paperweight. Any suggestions? Anyone I can talk to at Apple to make progress with either contacting the original owner or getting this "soft" fixed?

Update: Turns out it was one of two laptops stolen but they didn't have the serial number for this one in the report. So the original owner lucked out and I hope they are able to turn it over to her soon.
 
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EDIT: Scratch that, I guess there is an EFI lock (Googled it). Now to figure out how to turn it on.
 
Are you wiping the hard drive when you install Lion? I don't see how they could remote lock the computer once it has been wiped.
 
Tell the police who you bought it from. Do you have any personal details on the seller? Don't post them here, give them to the police.
 
I tried this method:

http://osxdaily.com/2009/10/19/bypass-mac-firmware-password/

I couldn't get it to work. I figured I'd try that after the genius couldn't reset it.

Here is the model into:

Intro Date: June 8, 2009 Disc Date: April 13, 2010
Order No: MB990LL/A Model No: A1278 (EMC 2326*)
Subfamily: Mid-2009 13" Model ID: MacBookPro5,5
Std. RAM: 2 GB Std. VRAM: 256 MB
Std. HD: 160 GB (5400 RPM) Std. Optical: 8X DL "SuperDrive"
Complete MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" (SD/FW) Specs

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jessica. said:
Tell the police who you bought it from. Do you have any personal details on the seller? Don't post them here, give them to the police.
Click to expand...

Yes, they have everything that I have on him. I have his name, phone number, email, facebook, twitter. He is not hiding. But it was never reported as stolen so the police can't do anything.
 
If it's some kind of hardware lock, replacing relevant chip might help.
Depends on mechanism used on that board.
 
honkeykong said:
I tried this method:

http://osxdaily.com/2009/10/19/bypass-mac-firmware-password/

I couldn't get it to work. I figured I'd try that after the genius couldn't reset it.

Here is the model into:

Intro Date: June 8, 2009 Disc Date: April 13, 2010
Order No: MB990LL/A Model No: A1278 (EMC 2326*)
Subfamily: Mid-2009 13" Model ID: MacBookPro5,5
Std. RAM: 2 GB Std. VRAM: 256 MB
Std. HD: 160 GB (5400 RPM) Std. Optical: 8X DL "SuperDrive"
Complete MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13" (SD/FW) Specs

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Yes, they have everything that I have on him. I have his name, phone number, email, facebook, twitter. He is not hiding. But it was never reported as stolen so the police can't do anything.
Click to expand...

Did you try resetting the pram 3 times after removing a ram chip? Worst case scenario is install lion on a different macbook, and then throw the hard drive in yours.
 
ugahairydawgs said:
Are you wiping the hard drive when you install Lion? I don't see how they could remote lock the computer once it has been wiped.
Click to expand...

Yep, got all the way to the iCloud setup. I imagine when I tried to register the serial with find my mac it triggered the lock.
 
ugahairydawgs said:
Are you wiping the hard drive when you install Lion? I don't see how they could remote lock the computer once it has been wiped.
Click to expand...

Yeah....guess you can hw lock it.

This may be an expensive lesson learned and a cautionary tale to others about using Craigslist and Ebay for high priced anything, but electronics especially.
 
goRoostr said:
Did you try resetting the pram 3 times after removing a ram chip? Worst case scenario is install lion on a different macbook, and then throw the hard drive in yours.
Click to expand...

I'll give that a go in a bit, thanks.

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ugahairydawgs said:
Yeah....guess you can hw lock it.

This may be an expensive lesson learned and a cautionary tale to others about using Craigslist and Ebay for high priced anything, but electronics especially.
Click to expand...

Yeah. My plan was to buy a recent generation pro and throw in 8gb memory and a 128GB SSD for under $800. I paid the going rate for that generation macbook, it wasn't listed for "$250 or a handful of crack." It didn't smell funny and had real pictures...

Ah well, now I'm going to do what I didn't want to do - finance a new one. I'll keep playing with this one to see if I can get it going for my wife or daughter.
 
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honkeykong said:
Ah well, now I'm going to do what I didn't want to do - finance a new one. I'll keep playing with this one to see if I can get it going for my wife or daughter.
Click to expand...

Stupid question, but I excel at that :) Contact the seller to see if he had the passcode? Or at least a legit excuse?
 
old-wiz said:
Appears you bought a stolen Macbook. Unfortunate for you.
Click to expand...

or the previous owner thought it would be funny to remote lock his system via find my iphone app

How does one completely untie the machine from a previous userid so the seller would be unable to say trace the buyer's position? A hdd wipe doesn't reset this
 
dukebound85 said:
or the previous owner thought it would be funny to remote lock his system via find my iphone app

How does one completely untie the machine from a previous userid so the seller would be unable to say trace the buyer's position? A hdd wipe doesn't reset this
Click to expand...

Technically you cant unless you unbind it from iCloud from the iCloud control panel. iCloud is tied to your ethernet Mac address.
 
Are you located anywhere in/around North Carolina?

We had a 13" MacBook Pro stolen from our department about three weeks ago. (We had an IP address, when the machine checked in on the network, the next day, but the campus police hemmed-and-hawed about pursuing the lead, as it would require contacting the ISP in question for a location.)
 
Ccrew said:
Stupid question, but I excel at that :) Contact the seller to see if he had the passcode? Or at least a legit excuse?
Click to expand...

Hasn't returned my texts or email. I'll keep trying, you never know. The name I saw before it locked was of a woman that didn't match his surname.
 
goRoostr said:
Technically you cant unless you unbind it from iCloud from the iCloud control panel. iCloud is tied to your ethernet Mac address.
Click to expand...

Actually without the recovery partition the functions in find my device don't work. You can't turn on find my device in the iCloud settings without that partition.

And to add, when I did this on accident installing ML on my dev laptop, it now shows up as device unavailable when I look it up. Also can't turn it back on due to the option being greyed out in iCloud settings with the message saying the partition is missing.
 
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mustang_dvs said:
Are you located anywhere in/around North Carolina?

We had a 13" MacBook Pro stolen from our department about three weeks ago. (We had an IP address, when the machine checked in on the network, the next day, but the campus police hemmed-and-hawed about pursuing the lead, as it would require contacting the ISP in question for a location.)
Click to expand...

I'm Near Allentown, PA. Not that it couldn't travel. Have you reported it stolen with the real police? I assume it would have hit when the PA state police looked up the serial number.
 
honkeykong said:
Hasn't returned my texts or email. I'll keep trying, you never know. The name I saw before it locked was of a woman that didn't match his surname.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess you bought a stolen laptop. The legit owner apparently didn't care to notify the police or apple about the theft, which is stupid since he/she could get his machine back.

It's good that you checked with the police and with Apple, although they couldn't help you in the end. At this point you should try to return the laptop to the seller, but I assume that you don't have any contact information besides the phone number.


@mustang
Why don't you PM him the stolen serial.
 
bogatyr said:
Actually without the recovery partition the functions in find my device don't work. You can't turn on find my device in the iCloud settings without that partition.
Click to expand...


Ahh, little known factoid. If it was enabled BEFORE the recovery partition was nuked it does continue to work, you just can't administer it at all without the partition. I found that out when I switched to an SSD in the early days of Lion and CC Cloner didn't have the ability yet to clone the recovery partition.

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honkeykong said:
Hasn't returned my texts or email. I'll keep trying, you never know. The name I saw before it locked was of a woman that didn't match his surname.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this one sounds pretty sketchy. Good luck. Knock on the door would make me nervous, but sounds like you're at least trying to do the right thing. Make sure you document it all just in case.

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mustang_dvs said:
We had a 13" MacBook Pro stolen from our department about three weeks ago. (We had an IP address, when the machine checked in on the network, the next day, but the campus police hemmed-and-hawed about pursuing the lead, as it would require contacting the ISP in question for a location.)
Click to expand...

It would be a shame for them to do their job now wouldn't it? Stuff like that I just dunno....
 
Did you happened to get any of the information of the previous owner? You said her details were in there, you can try using the name you have to get in contact with her.
 
derickdub said:
Did you happened to get any of the information of the previous owner? You said her details were in there, you can try using the name you have to get in contact with her.
Click to expand...

I only saw her name a second before it was locked. Everything before I upgraded was from the guy I bought it from.
 
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