Q: Recently acquired iMac - Want to do fresh install of El Capitan
Hi,
I am new to he world of Mac - I have recently acquired my Sons iMac (27 inch late 2009) which has been well looked after and has already been upgraded to El Capitan. I am not a complete novice in computers as I have been using, building and repairing PC's since MS Windows 3 onwards... and I have to wonder why it's taken me so long to get to Mac??
There are things I would like to do with this new (to me) iMac before I start to use it in earnest firstly it has lots of apps and programs and games which my son installed and used that I probably never will, I'd like to do a fresh install of OS-X El Capitan so that I can refresh the whole system as if new. I would also like to upgrade the memory, it currently has 4GB of Memory (2 x 2GB Dimms) and I would like to upgrade it to it's full potential of 16Gb (4 x 4GB) I have seen compatible SODIMMS available from Crucial.com Is this a job I could carry out given I have work on PC's etc and am no afraid to give it a go myself if its possible.
All advice will be helpful, (please excuse terminology if it's not correct in referring to all things Mac) Please be gentle :-)
Many Thanks in Advance
IanE
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
Posted on Mar 6, 2016 10:12 AM
He was told it would be easier to just reinstall El Capitan from fresh, rather than go back to the out of the box when it as pre installed with Yosemite and then upgrade to El Capitan
Yes, that may be easier; however, the problem with that is: any download/purchase from the app store is tied to the Apple ID used to obtain it and is NOT transferable. Therefore, it would be much easier to do what he should have done (per the licensing agreement): erase the hard drive and reinstall the original OS.
You can do this now by booting into internet recovery: reboot the Mac while holding down Command + Option + R right after the startup chime. You will need to hold those for a while until you see a progress bar. The Mac will be attempting to connect with Apple's servers to get you into recovery mode (will take a while). Once you see a Utilities window, choose Disk Utility and erase the hard drive. When finished, simply click on reinstall OS X and it will install a factory fresh OS which you can then associate with your own Apple ID during the setup phase.
If you have any files on it you want to save, back them up first as you will lose everything.
Posted on Mar 6, 2016 2:11 PM
