Rebuilding old iMacs

[richmackie]

I've inherited some 2007 Core 2 Duo iMacs and for various reasons I want to wipe them and reinstall MacOS. On the newer models I just press Command+R as they boot up and that gets me into disk utility etc. but on these older ones it's different, but for the life of me I can't find anything that works. Any Mac experts out there able to assist?

 

Cheers.

[Primus]

Yes you'll need to get the correct Mac OS installer (latest that model accepts) and make a USB boot device. Then hold alt when it boots and select the USB drive.

[bald_pig]

Depending on how many there are, it might be worth setting up deploystudio to image them all.

[Stevecee]

I would imagine these have DVD Drives, if you have the DVD start holding down the "C" key

 

HTH

 

Steve

[TomHD]

You could try internet recovery to reset to factory, you will need to update to latest OS after

 

Hold Command+Option+R on boot (note that enabling a proxy in Mac OS utilies is not a breeze but is possible)

[Primus]

You could try internet recovery to reset to factory, you will need to update to latest OS after

 

Hold Command+Option+R on boot (note that enabling a proxy in Mac OS utilies is not a breeze but is possible)

 

Did you read his post?

[TomHD]

Did you read his post?

 

Command+R is NOT the same as Command+Option+R

 

I did read it yes!

[Primus]

These Macs are so old they don't support Internet recovery...

[william_tropico]

Hello,

 

I've just acquired an old MacBook (2009 i think) and i used macOS Patcher - macOS Mojave Patcher to update it to latest macOS. Guide is on the website and is easy enough to follow. Just double check that the hardware is supported (macOS Mojave Patcher)

 

I think if you just hold down option/alt key you can boot from USB.

[londonbg]

You need to make yourself a USB install disk.

 

The HD boot thing is just for consumers in an emergency and isn't actually very helpful or useful.

 

Grab yourself a copy of Diskmaker X

 

You'll need an 8gb or larger ideally USB stick

 

If you need links to particular installers please feel free to give me a shout

 

Diskmaker X will do the rest

 

https://diskmakerx.com

 

There are older versions of diskmaker on their web site for the correspondingly older system versions

 

Once you've made your USB installer simply restart the machine whilst holding down the ALT key and then you can choose the drive to start up from.

Edited July 4, 2019 by londonbg