System Restore?

[shoobirdy]

Hi

New to Macs so forgive the lack of knowledge

I just bought an imac off ebay to get to grips with OSX etc before fully "conerting" to macs with a more up to date system.

The problem is that it's still set up under someone else's profile and to install new or update software I need the admin password which I do not have. I've tried to contact the seller who doesn't seem to know either so I'm a bit stuck!

I don't have and installation disks so I was wondering if there's some way to restart the whole thing from scratch - similar to a system restore on acer and dell laptops - without losing the OS and original set up software?

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[Schtumple]

Sadly not, you need the system installer discs that would've come with the mac, Do you know what system is installed? 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard) etc etc

You can pick up Mac OSX Tiger discs on ebay for pretty cheap these days now.

 

[shoobirdy]

It's Tiger that's installed.

I've seen them on ebay so it's not a problem I guess - just annoying because I've been waiting a week for delivery (easter post lol) and was looking forward to messing around all night with it!

Oh well - thanks for te info

 

[Schtumple]

It's alright, make sure you get a retail disc, and not the 2 grey discs, as they're machine specific, and it'll be very very hard for you to track down the correct discs.

 

[Consultant]

If the seller doesn't know then it's probably stolen.

It's easier to buy a system with the original disks.

 

[Schtumple]

If the seller doesn't know then it's probably stolen.

It's easier to buy a system with the original disks.

That really isn't always the case... If it was, then atleast 50% of all used Macs on eBay are stolen