[Hattifnatten]

We recently recieved an old 2007 iMac with OsX 10.5, with instructions to back up the content, and then reinstall/reset the machine and make it ready for another user. As I'm not too familiar with Macs, the last part has been a problem for me. I thought it would be as simple as CMD + R during boot, but soon realized that recovery-mode was not introduced before 10.7. We've tried to call the customer again and again to ask her if she has an install-cd, but it goes to voicemail every time. I found some steps that I could follow, but it seemed that it was a bit hit and miss; I'd rather not brick the customers computer.
Is there any way to remove all user-data and apps from the computer so that we can make it ready for a new user?
Or should we try to ugrade to Snow Leopard and then to Lion/later (afaik that iMac is upgradable to El Capitan) so that we can use the recovery-mode?

 

[Lord Xeb]

Machines running Leopard does not have the option for CMD + R as that OS doesn't have a recovery parttion. The best option would be to upgrade to snow Leopard and then to a newer OS like el capitan. Also, make sure the system has 4GB of ram otherwise it will run like crap on anything higher than snow leopard. During the install you can also just format the drive and clean install.

To grab all of her data, you can just copy it to an external drive. In terminal, just use the following:

cp -Rp
press enter and let it do its thing.

 

[Hattifnatten]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Xeb

Machines running Leopard does not have the option for CMD + R as that OS doesn't have a recovery parttion. The best option would be to upgrade to snow Leopard and then to a newer OS like el capitan. Also, make sure the system has 4GB of ram otherwise it will run like crap on anything higher than snow leopard. During the install you can also just format the drive and clean install.

To grab all of her data, you can just copy it to an external drive. In terminal, just use the following:

cp -Rp
press enter and let it do its thing.

I believe it has 3GB of ram, do you think that would be a problem?
Also, won't TimeMachine do the trick?

 

[Lord Xeb]

3GB would be fine. TimwMachine will have the same is on it as what is on the system.