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MacBook Pro mid 2009 factory reset

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro mid 2009 but they did not reset it prior to selling it to me . I have no idea what updates they have done to it or if it has a disk. I want to completely reset it and start over. How would I go about doing that with this laptop. I’ve tried recovery mode and it will not work (command + R) . Help please!

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jul 20, 2019 10:47 PM

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Posted on Jul 21, 2019 7:17 AM

It appears those Macs shipped with 10.5.7 installed, so 10.6 DVD would work great. The DVD also contains the Utilities you need, such as Disk Utility.


I believe the procedure was, you boot from the DVD, wait for the Installer screen to come up, and wait for the menubar to be drawn. Then choose Disk Utility off the Utilities menu.


Once you get 10.6 Snow Leopard Installed, use

 menu > Software Update ...


... to apply all the updates. Then the Mac App Store will appear, and you can use Mac App Store downloads to continue. Once you install a later version, a Recovery partition will be added, and you can use Recovery when you need it.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jul 21, 2019 7:17 AM in response to Kmar9

It appears those Macs shipped with 10.5.7 installed, so 10.6 DVD would work great. The DVD also contains the Utilities you need, such as Disk Utility.


I believe the procedure was, you boot from the DVD, wait for the Installer screen to come up, and wait for the menubar to be drawn. Then choose Disk Utility off the Utilities menu.


Once you get 10.6 Snow Leopard Installed, use

 menu > Software Update ...


... to apply all the updates. Then the Mac App Store will appear, and you can use Mac App Store downloads to continue. Once you install a later version, a Recovery partition will be added, and you can use Recovery when you need it.

MacBook Pro mid 2009 factory reset

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