we were given a Mac 10.6.8 and can not update it as we do not have any of the administrator passwords. would anyone be able to help me reset the Mac back to the factory settings. Thanks.
Unfortunately since Apple only started creating recovery partitions with 10.7, you’ll have to have either a 10.6 disk (great, now I feel terribly old) or a USB drive set up to install 10.6. The latter… I don’t know if you can do via Windows. Do you know what model of computer it is? Maybe you can run something newer.
Oh, great! That’s exactly what we need. It’s a 21.5” Mid 2011 iMac. The good news is that you can install the newest OS on it once you get it running. The bad news is that you’ll still need a 10.6 disk to bypass the password on the existing account and do a clean reinstall of the software. eBay will have plenty of options for you if you don’t have a disc already.
Here’s how to clean install OS X. Because you can’t click on the disc on your desktop, you’ll have to boot directly to it. Pop the disc in the computer while it’s running. Then restart the computer. After you hear the boot sound, hold the Option (alt) key on your keyboard until you see a grey screen with two options. They should be “Macintosh HD” and “OS X Install”; the former is a square, the latter is a circle. Use the mouse (I think you can use the mouse) or the arrow keys and Return to select the OS X Install disc, and then you can follow the instructions in that link to clean install Snow Leopard and make yourself a new administrator account.
Once you have OS X installed, run Software Update to get yourself back to 10.6.8 (depending on the disc you buy, you might not need to do that). Once on 10.6.8, you can go to the App Store and search for “Sierra”. Download it, let it install, and then boom. iMac with the newest software. Though in running Sierra, you may want to install more RAM (memory) for it, since it only has 4 GB. Here’s a link to a single 8GB stick (you can have up to two, so 16 eventually). Unfortunately because this model is now 6 years old, RAM prices are slowly going back up.
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Here’s how to clean install OS X. Because you can’t click on the disc on your desktop, you’ll have to boot directly to it. Pop the disc in the computer while it’s running. Then restart the computer. After you hear the boot sound, hold the Option (alt) key on your keyboard until you see a grey screen with two options. They should be “Macintosh HD” and “OS X Install”; the former is a square, the latter is a circle. Use the mouse (I think you can use the mouse) or the arrow keys and Return to select the OS X Install disc, and then you can follow the instructions in that link to clean install Snow Leopard and make yourself a new administrator account.
Once you have OS X installed, run Software Update to get yourself back to 10.6.8 (depending on the disc you buy, you might not need to do that). Once on 10.6.8, you can go to the App Store and search for “Sierra”. Download it, let it install, and then boom. iMac with the newest software. Though in running Sierra, you may want to install more RAM (memory) for it, since it only has 4 GB. Here’s a link to a single 8GB stick (you can have up to two, so 16 eventually). Unfortunately because this model is now 6 years old, RAM prices are slowly going back up.