empty mac

[bazza05]

hi guys...

l've just got this imac, a 2009 20" 350gb, the girl before me has "done a propper job" of cleaning up her old files and "returned the mac to factory settings."

being new to macs, l was told that when you get it home you can just boot it up and reinstall 10.10 yosemite on it. theres no disc as it's all done online.

so l got it home, booted it up and was faced with 4 options
1. back up from time machine
2. reload os x
3. online help
4. disc utillities
well, needles to say i spent the rest of my day off trying to reinstall yosemite, including help from applecare and after hours of doing this, doing that, the only advice they could give me was.... buy a disc and reload that!!

did i miss anything?

or is the disc the only way out??

 

[honestone]

First, what OS is on the iMac now? Given that you were able to boot up your machine, there is certainly "some" Mac OS on it.

Secondly, for "reload os x", wonder which OS that would be? How did you actually try to reinstall yosemite?

 

[bazza05]

hi honestone and thanks for replying so quickly.

your answers are....
yosemite WAS on there, well a bit of it was!!! lol
and ''reload os x'' wanted me to reload yosemite, but when i got to the pick destination bit l only had 1 choice, but wasn't allowed to pick it, so couldn't continue on!!

the issue now has been resolved buy CATE @ applecare late last night (tho not sue what time it was in NY ....lol)

she walked me thru a clean wipe of the HD, as there was a partion? on there stopping me. once this was deleted, snow leopard was able to get past the block and load up.

l am not a geek by any standards and l am self taught on the pc and very recently the mac. without you guys and girls, l'm a dead fish. so again honestone ty for your help

 

[honestone]

OK, sounds good. What you need to do going forward is:

1. Start making backups to an external device. Time Machine is OK for that, but a backup/cloning program like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner is much better. In fact, if there was such a backup made shortly after you got your machine, the process you went through would have been quite a lot easier!

2. Perform disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs on a frequent basis. Disk cleanup is something you can do every day (I certainly do it). As for disk maintenance and repairs, Disk Utility is OK for that, but to be truly effective, it needs to be done externally. That is where a bootable backup/clone created by either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Clone comes in extremely handy. Also, you could invest in a more robust program like either Tech Tool Pro or Disk Warrior for such tasks. And, there is the excellent freeware program Onyx.

3. DO NOT install either MacKeeper or CleanMyMac. Either of those products do more harm that good.

 

[bazza05]

will do honestone ty