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All replies
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Helpful answers
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May 6, 2015 6:21 PM in response to goldielox123by Mike Sombrio,In order to reset to "factory" settings you need to use your original gray install disc to erase the hard drive.
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May 7, 2015 7:07 AM in response to Mike Sombrioby goldielox123,What happens if I don't have those? Is there a way to do it from the computer itself?
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May 7, 2015 8:26 AM in response to goldielox123by woodmeister50,You can completely erase the internal drive including the recovery partition.
You will need to first make a Recovery USB stick, boot from it and open Disk Utility
and erase the drive.
What you should do is recreate a single partition on the drive, formatted GUID,
and in the options, select write zeros to the drive. Formatting simply removes and recreates the
new directories but the data is still intact on the disk and could be recoverable.
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May 7, 2015 8:42 AM in response to woodmeister50by John0001,There is no need for the install media, you just need an internet connection during the restore process.
Reboot holding Command + R to enter the restore partition. The key with "Completly" restoring is to first format the drive, and then do a restore, otherwise it just basically does a reinstall of the OS and retains your files and settings.
Follow this, and be careful not to delete the recovery partition!
OS X Yosemite: Erase and reinstall OS X
Ps: it can take awhile because it downloads the entire OS, what we used to keep as the recovery disk as said above.
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May 7, 2015 10:21 AM in response to John0001by Mike Sombrio,You're assuming the OP has a mid 2010 or later iMac. I'm betting his iMac is older than that will not do internet recovery. Would be nice if he would provide more info.
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May 7, 2015 10:47 AM in response to Mike Sombrioby John0001,hrm, the apple articals on using the restore only specify the OS, not the hardware version. he has at least a 2007 iMac or Yosemite wouldn't load. However, the oldest thing I've does the Internet restore on was a 2010 MBA so can't say from experience.
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May 7, 2015 4:51 PM in response to Mike Sombrioby John0001,Wow, and thanks Mike. That's some really poor documentation on Apple's part, but we hate all experienced their Apple Care support (aka LOL support). Thanks! I just hope this poor dude didn't format an 8 y/o drive like I suggested... Thought at this year even Apple users would think 8 y/o computer = dont trust online documentation... But I know I'm wrong.........