Hi all, I've looked on Youtube and have read here but nothing seems to be working for this particular iMac. Restarting and pressing cmd-R didn't seem to do anything. This Mac is using a Windows keyboard, so I pressed the Windows button and also put on my Apple keyboard but still I just end up at the login screen for the accounts.
iMac 5,1
Intel Core 2 Duo
MacOS 10.6.8
Any help would be appreciated.
Earlier Mac models
Command-R will have no effect on a Mac that is running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. The recovery partition was not introduced until 10.7 Lion.
To reset your Mac 2007 you will need to use the Mac OS X reinstall DVDs that originally shipped with that computer. They were a grey-label disc specific to the model and year of that particular computer.
If you don't have those discs, you'll need to find a copy of the retail version of 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Optionally, if the computer is running fine, you could come close to a factory reset by first creating a new user account with admin rights. Then, sign out of all other accounts, login to the new admin account and then delete the other user accounts and their data.
What are your plans for this vintage Mac?
Command-R will have no effect on a Mac that is running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. The recovery partition was not introduced until 10.7 Lion.
To reset your Mac 2007 you will need to use the Mac OS X reinstall DVDs that originally shipped with that computer. They were a grey-label disc specific to the model and year of that particular computer.
If you don't have those discs, you'll need to find a copy of the retail version of 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Optionally, if the computer is running fine, you could come close to a factory reset by first creating a new user account with admin rights. Then, sign out of all other accounts, login to the new admin account and then delete the other user accounts and their data.
What are your plans for this vintage Mac?
Like D.I. says you'd need a 10.6.8 Snow Leopard DVD or an install image . What's it running now?
Pretty sure the 5,1 was a 2006 iMac model.
For it you need the white Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD, which I believe was 10.6.3.
Then the 10.6.8 Combo Update at > Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 - Apple Support
I followed your final, optional solution by creating another account and whacking everything else.
This Mac will then be given to an older person who's just writing their family history. It's too slow for me and my purposes, but perfect for an 80-year-old who doesn't want to even use a browser. :)
Thanks for the assistance.
You're welcome!
And that sounds like an excellent new life for an old piece of tech. 🙂
EDIT: Please consider setting up a backup strategy for this old computer. It would be a shame to lose the family history that will be written with it due to a simple hardware failure.
One backup option: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
How to reset iMac when using macOS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)?
