Erasing data on a 2008 Mac OSX

Actually the first thing to do would be to create a bootable macOS 10.11 El Capitan USB installer now while you are able to boot this Mac normally. Once this older Mac is erased your options for reinstalling macOS become very limited & difficult.

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

When downloading macOS 10.11 El Capitan, please read the instructions very carefully since there are multiple steps for downloading & extracting the real installer into the Applications folder.

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

FYI, here is what your grand daughter should have done before giving you her old Mac (keep in mind this article refers to newer systems so you will need to use the information I provided above to fill in some of the gaps before actually erasing the system):

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Unfortunately macOS 10.11 is the last supported version of macOS for a 2008 Mac. This OS is so outdated that you are going to have trouble accessing online content & services.

A better more useful option if you are willing to learn a new different OS would be to install Linux Mint. Linux Mint should be easy to install & it looks great and can run on older computers with more limited resources. It is best if the computer has 4GB+ of memory, but it can be used with 3GB or as little as 2GB of memory for just basic usage where you only have a couple browser windows/tabs open at one time. Linux will be an up to date non-Apple OS which has access to the most recent versions of many of the popular web browsers (FireFox, Chrome, Vivaldi and others) as well as access to lots of free open source software in the Linux Mint software repositories including LibreOffice (similar to Microsoft Office). You can actually test drive Linux Mint by selecting the "Live" option when booting the Linux Mint USB installer. It will show you what it will be like although performance will be slow when booted from the USB stick.

If you decide to try Linux Mint, then definitely make sure to first create a bootable macOS 10.11 El Capitan USB installer so that you can go back to macOS if Linux Mint is not for you.

Bless your granddaughter's kind heart. 💕 It's very nice of her to pass that computer on to you.

But to be honest, she's done you no favor.

Putting that 2008 Mac into productive service will be challenging at best, even even if all you want to use it for is email or internet surfing. It's an obsolete hobby machine, but if you keep your expectations for it low, you can learn something about vintage Macs.

Take you granddaughter to lunch and thank her for thinking of you.

Meanwhile, @Niel is correct about the requirements for a proper reset of the computer. It will require the install DVD that shipped with it, or a retail version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Ideally one would erase the drive and reinstall OS X to restore the Mac to factory state.

However, with the assistance of your granddaughter, you can sort of cheat and make it useable otherwise, IF the computer still has an administrator account that you can login to.

If the user account you granddaughter was using is still in place, you can use that to create a new user account for yourself, give it admin privileges, and then login to that to erase the old one. The new user account will appear as if the computer were brand new. And when you erase her old account, everything that was in that account will be erased as well; all of her old documents, files and whatever else might have been left behind.

If you need guidance for that, just let us know. 🙂

Restart the computer from a compatible Mac OS X install DVD, use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive, and install a fresh OS from that DVD. Ones intended for a different Mac model won't work.

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