Restoring 2007 Macbook to factory settings

1. No.

2. Either phone Apple and order replacement original disks or buy a Mac OS X 10.6 DVD from the online Apple Store; these won't be too expensive or hard to use.

(125144)

You will need discs. Unfortunately, the only one readily available is a retail disc for Snow Leopard which is not what originally came with the computer. But it will do what you want:

You can purchase Snow Leopard through the Apple Store:Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.). The price is $19.99 plus tax. You will be sent physical media by mail after placing your order.

After you install Snow Leopard you will have to download and install the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 to update Snow Leopard to 10.6.8 and give you access to the App Store. The following outlines how to install Snow Leopard once you get the DVD.

Clean Install of Snow Leopard

1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came

with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.

After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see

a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.

2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue

button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.

After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive

size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of

partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button

and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended

(Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.

3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed

with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.

4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup

Assistant. After you finish Setup Assistant will complete the installation after which

you will be running a fresh install of OS X. You can now begin the update process

by opening Software Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your

installation current.

5. If you are planning to sell or give your computer away, then do the following:

After you reformat your hard drive and reinstall OS X, the computer restarts to a

Welcome screen and asks you to choose a country or region. If you want to leave

the Mac in an out-of-box state, don't continue with the setup of your system. Instead,

press Command-Q to shut down the Mac. When the new owner turns on the Mac,

the Setup Assistant will guide them through the setup process.

Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

After installing a new OS X system, the computer could stand for an upgrade in RAM

to at least 2GB of quality RAM, not cheap generic product, so it will run w/o issue...

Also, you may wish to be on the lookout online for an iLife application set on DVD for

the era of OS X you are to be installing. This provide iPhoto, iMovie, & GarageBand;

more commonly included applications similar to those which shipped in the original

bundle of applications. iLife '11 may be OK for use in the computer you have, and it

would be shipped from an online re-seller, on DVD media.

Some places online may sell the set of OS X 10.6.3 and iLife '11, perhaps iWork, too.

These would be 'retail DVD' and best price for Snow Leopard is Apple online. The

other items, iLife and iWorks, among other dated original Apple software may be

found by searching online. These would be on original DVD media.

A more recent browser may be Firefox from mozilla, as Safari is a bit dated, but was

included in the Snow Leopard system. Not sure if there was a later Safari available

after the one 10.6.8 included. After installing 10.6 on DVD, run Software Update in

the system, [or use link] to get 10.6.8 Combo update, install it & then run Software

Update again, to see what else may be out there. If you get the iLife or iWork apps

then repeat the Software Update to see what other parts may be free to update them.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂