Have an older mac laptop not connected to any apple id. Want to erase the the hard drive -give back to apple. Control R for disk utility is not working. Need support erasing hard drive before returning to Apple serial number not recognized Any suggestions would be helpful.
MacBook
An 'older Macintosh' may require an original or last supported version Mac OS X system install
disc, to be used as Startup disk; then the Disk Utilities on that media (used as startup) can then
be used to Erase the hard drive.
example:
• How to Install Leopard OS X 10.5: 9 Steps (with pictures) ~ incl. Snow Leopard 10.6.x
https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Leopard-OS-X-10.5
• How to Reinstall Mac OS X (Leopard and Earlier) in 15 Steps - wikihow
https://www.wikihow.com/Reinstall-Mac-OS-X-%28Leopard-and-Earlier%29
With this method, you can have the system DVD installer put a fully new system on the Hard Drive.
Then exit the installer prior to the point where the installer asks for your personal information. Any
new owner, the following this via first-startup, could finish the new installation and personalize mac.
• How to Re-run the OS X Setup Assistant - the instructional
http://www.theinstructional.com/guides/how-to-re-run-the-os-x-setup-assistant
This assumes your older Mac shipped with a system on disc media and has working optical drive.
Good luck & happy trails! 🌞
An 'older Macintosh' may require an original or last supported version Mac OS X system install
disc, to be used as Startup disk; then the Disk Utilities on that media (used as startup) can then
be used to Erase the hard drive.
example:
• How to Install Leopard OS X 10.5: 9 Steps (with pictures) ~ incl. Snow Leopard 10.6.x
https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Leopard-OS-X-10.5
• How to Reinstall Mac OS X (Leopard and Earlier) in 15 Steps - wikihow
https://www.wikihow.com/Reinstall-Mac-OS-X-%28Leopard-and-Earlier%29
With this method, you can have the system DVD installer put a fully new system on the Hard Drive.
Then exit the installer prior to the point where the installer asks for your personal information. Any
new owner, the following this via first-startup, could finish the new installation and personalize mac.
• How to Re-run the OS X Setup Assistant - the instructional
http://www.theinstructional.com/guides/how-to-re-run-the-os-x-setup-assistant
This assumes your older Mac shipped with a system on disc media and has working optical drive.
Good luck & happy trails! 🌞
PS:
If your old Mac has intel-based hardware and may have macOS recovery partition
installed on separate partition in the hard drive, this set of instructions may help:
• How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
OK maybe I can help you...a bit. Disk Utility should be on your mac laptop's hard drive under the "Utilities" folder. I don't know anything about giving your laptop back to Apple. None of us work for Apple and Apple doesn't post here. We're just Mac users, same as you. Anyways, try running Disk Utility from there, and as for getting into the Recovery Partition, it's command/cloverleaf/Apple key and R held down together. If you have a windows keyboard, it's the "Alt". As for the serial number not recognized, I don't know about that either. You'd have to talk to someone else about that. IF you're absolutely desperate to erase your hard drive, and you've also done a backup, and de-authorized it for the App store and iTunes, and I'm guessing you have, which is good...then If your laptop is old enough, you can buy and use a dvd copy of Snow Leopard, boot up from that and run Disk Utility. Please note that in order to find Disk Utility these days, you have to move the mouse to the top center of the screen, OS X Tools will show up, and from there you can get to Disk Utility
hope this helps you some
john B
erasing old computers
