I bought a used MacBook. It’s an older machine, 2008 I think. I want to do a factory reset but it won’t do it. I have tried command R on startup up many times but it just boots to the home screen. I read to check terminal for a recovery disk. It doesn’t seem to have one. I tried an internet recovery. Still boots to the home screen. What the heck is going on and how do I do a factory reset? I have some discs for my iMac, will they help?
MacBook
What is the exact model of the laptop? You can get this information by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About this Mac" or by entering your serial number here.
What version of macOS is installed?
You can try an Option Boot to see if the hidden recovery partition is visible in the Apple boot picker menu which will depend on the OS installed.
If you can boot the laptop you can download the macOS installer from the App Store and create a bootable macOS USB installer.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
Chances are OSX 10.11 El Capitan is the highest you can go:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886
Make sure to use Disk Utility from the installer to erase the physical drive before installing macOS.
Unfortunately Internet Recovery Mode doesn't always work on older systems even when they had OSX 10.12.4+ installed at some point. If local Recovery Mode isn't working, then either the drive is blank/corrupted or you could have a failing hard drive.
You need to use the computer's original disks, or a newer retail package, or a homemade installation thumbdrive as described above. A 2008 Mac can't access the Internet Recovery system, and since the Command+R shortcut is being ignored, is probably running an OS too old for it; in any case, a recovery partition will only be useful if you've previously downloaded the same OS version from your own Apple ID.
(173092)
sylviefromwindsor wrote:
I have some discs for my iMac, will they help?
Yes, use the original disks it shipped with "grey" label.
Cannot Factory Reset
