How to restore to factory settings

Question

Level 1

8 points

How to restore to factory settings

Hi,

I bought my computer with Snow Leopard and recently upgraded to Lion. I wanted to restore my computer to factory settings. I have a back-up of the stuff I want to keep and I was wondering what would be the easiest way to do this. Can I factory reinstall from Lion OSX? I tried popping in my Snow Leopard Disc but when I try and install it back from Lion I get a message that says I need Mac OSX 23.1.1.1.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

pgudme

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 4, 2011 8:01 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 4, 2011 8:12 PM in response to pgudme

If you are content that you have what you need well backed up, you pop in the original Snow Leopard disk and boot from that rather than your hard drive. Then you use disk utility to delete the contents of your hard drive. At that point it will let you do a full install from the original media. You will have your Mac back the way it was when you purchased it.

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Answer 2

pgudme Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 4, 2011 8:20 PM in response to terryfromportland

But the problem is that when I click the install Snow Leopard I get an error message. Or booting from the DVD is different from inserting the CD from the desktop and running it?

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Answer 3

Aug 4, 2011 8:29 PM in response to pgudme

Well yes. You can't just read the DVD and install it over the running OS. You need to reboot the machine and have it running from the media in your optical drive. You can do this by holding down the C key when you restart - it should come up running Snow Leopard from the DVD. Then you can erase and install.

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Answer 4

Aug 4, 2011 9:18 PM in response to pgudme

Some people with Mac OS X 10.7 have reported they can't use the "c" key at startup to boot from the Snow Leopard install disk. Try going to the Startup Disk System Preferences and choose the Snow Leopard disk and then restart.

-Doug

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