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ClipCable

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 23, 2017
6
0
Santa Barbara, CA
I bought a used IMac with 10.7.5 os. The seller said she didn't have a password. It has tons of files, pics etc. that I wanted to delete but couldn't do so without resetting the password. A YouTube video said to press 'Restart', the Apple and 'R' button upon restart. It didn't say when to let go, so I might have held it too long. Now all I get is a grey screen with a frozen cursor, a pic of the bottom of the mouse, an a tablet-looking picture. I don't know anything about computers, how can I get the computer back to normal?
 
It's asking for the previous owner's password. She insists she doesn't have one or ever needed one. I just discovered that I can eliminate the grey screen by pressing 'Esc'. It comes back at random, but I can live with it. Thanks for your response.
 
Not knowing the specs of your iMac, I would invest $20 in Snow Leopard OS X.6 which is available from Apple Online, see link. Snow Leopard is a far superior operating system to Lion, OS X.7, so if the iMac is pretty old, suggest staying there. With the Snow Leopard DVD, suggest you boot from it, holding down 'C' immediately after the chime and erase and format the drive and do a clean install.

If the seller genuinely did not have a password, leave it blank and hit return and see if it goes further.


https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard
 
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