Used computer - reset settings

[Zotaccian]

Sorry for the title, but here's the thing. I bought used Mac with Mac OS X 10.5.8. I have again lost my Leopard installation disk, I know it's there somewhere

However, since this thing already has fully updated Leopard I'm thinking about not reinstalling at all. There was some Remote admin and sharing settings enabled and I of course disabled them. Seller did not tell me his password but I googled the instructions how to force new account creating by using few commands so I do have admin account now. I deleted seller's account and files, but it did not reset those remote admin etc. settings so I wonder what else there is to look for? Remote admin sounds bad even though I believe seller just forgot those and his intention was not to do harm and when he doesn't know my IP I'm not sure is it even possible to do harm.

Is there anything else to look for? I will check and remove any possible unnecessary application of course altough it seems that there is none.

 

[Soba]

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but generally it's wisest to completely wipe any used machine you get. There's just no way to know what was done to the machine, and it's very possible that the system has been modified to monitor what you're doing via keystroke loggers, trojans, and so on. Such modifications can be very difficult to detect.

Taking a less paranoid stance, the OS may not be in a good state if the prior user tinkered with it and ended up breaking something in a non-obvious way.

It's best to wipe it, IMO, and this holds for any computer, regardless of OS (though Windows acquires so much cruft it's practically a necessity in that case).

 

[Zotaccian]

Response to this as I now managed to get working battery for this machine.

Yes it would be best solution to reinstall. This iBook G4 with 1Ghz CPU and 1.25GB RAM takes longer time to boot into Leopard than it takes for my iBook G3 500Mhz with 128MB RAM to boot into Tiger so I'm also considering downgrading the OS for better performance, I did disk repair and it found lots of stuff to correct but I can't see any improvement.

I just checked that this laptop apparently has 4200rpm hard drive (IC25N030ATMR04-0). Disk Utility says everything is OK in S.M.A.R.T.

 

[Soba]

Hmm. I had good performance with my iBook G3 (Dual USB; 640MB RAM max) on Tiger. It was a little slower at launching programs, but once I began using things, it performed better than any other version of OS X.

Unfortunately, SMART is rather worthless in definitively diagnosing problems. How full is the drive? Performance will drop as the drive fills, and it becomes very noticeable around the 60 - 70% range.

To cover all bases, I'd suggest zeroing the drive using Disk Utility, as that will (I think) check for bad blocks, and if there are no errors during that process, you can probably rest easy and reinstall Tiger. If it were a more easily serviceable system, I'd suggest installing a new drive if only to get much better performance, but those old iBooks were real beasts to dismantle. :<