How do I prepare my Mac mini for resale? I have upgraded to moutain lion, but have the OS X 10.6.3 install DVD that came with my mac.

Boot up to your 10.6.3 DVD and completely reformat and

repartition your hard drive. You may even want to do

the lowest level of secure erase options which will actually

zero out your disk (just formatting will only wipe directories

and partitoning info. The bit patterns still remain). This

will however take quite some time.

Next, re-install 10.6.3 on the Mini. When the reboot occurs

on completion, you can either shutdown which will let the buyer

start up as if it were a new Mac or like I do, create a dummy user

so you can at least demo the Mini to a perspective buyer.

Because of the licensing agreements, you can only sell a used

Mac with its originally installed OS. Selling it with any later

upgrade installed (major versions) violates the EULA for

for those OSes as they are not transferable.

woodmester50 has it right. I always create an account and update the OS to the most current version so the new user doesn't have to. That also allows the potential buyer to see that the computer works.

woodmeister50 wrote:

You may even want to do the lowest level of secure erase options which will actually zero out your disk (just formatting will only wipe directories and partitoning info. The bit patterns still remain). This will however take quite some time.

You should most certainly do this.