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Albertomac

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
32
0
Mexico
Someone is selling me a cheap used imac intel, but he lost all the original installation discs....and I have to reinstall the system because he lost the adminstrator password to install apps too ,
what can I do ? My dad have a mac mini intel , can I use his discs?

Hope , you can help me before he sells the imac...Does apple sell tiger for intel?

:confused:
 
Albertomac said:
Someone is selling me a cheap used imac intel, but he lost all the original installation discs....and I have to reinstall the system because he lost the adminstrator password to install apps too ,
what can I do ? My dad have a mac mini intel , can I use his discs?

Hope , you can help me before he sells the imac...Does apple sell tiger for intel?

:confused:

...yes. They designed it. Go buy a copy.
 
Do you know and/or trust the seller? I'd be suspicious...

It's cheap
They "lost" the install discs
They "lost" the password

Could be stolen.
 
They´re Not

reh said:
Do you know and/or trust the seller? I'd be suspicious...

It's cheap
They "lost" the install discs
They "lost" the password

Could be stolen.


DONT WORRY.. what happens is that someone owed tax money to the government, and is the goverment who ¨ took¨ the computers among many other things, who is selling this imac.. by the way I live on Mexico...
:)
 
Call Apple they will send replacement DVDs to the registered owner for about $19.95
 
Ha Ha

elbirth said:
yeah, this whole thread reeks of illegal activities.

HA HA :D it´s legall after all is a governmnent branch that is selling the computer

Imagine the police took everything for you and one week later they come again and say: eh, sorry mister I need your administrator password on the imac :p

I dont think is possible .. :rolleyes:

or at least do you know a way, so I can get the password and later with more time I can purchase a copy of original cds on E-bay and have them shipped to Mexico ?

Many people in mexico,including myself never register the computer to apple, because almost all the benefits are for USA residents...
 
Albertomac said:
HA HA :D it´s legall after all is a governmnent branch that is selling the computer
This is awfully quick for a branch of the US govt.

The computers I expect them to sell from seizures would probably be SE/30s and 386/486 clones.
 
Sun Baked said:
This is awfully quick for a branch of the US govt.

The computers I expect them to sell from seizures would probably be SE/30s and 386/486 clones.


I live on Mexico, they took 3 imacs, among other things, but yes, this is a big oportunity.....but Im afraid that maybe I cant install anything because it will ask me for the admin password...

If I lived on the USA I will only call apple or ask somebody who has a similar computer, but in Mexico there arent many macs around, maybe like 1 of every 1000 computers its a mac here...
 
Well, you could still try calling Apple's Latin America support branch; they may not have much presence, but they must have SOMETHING, since they do sell to that part of the world--if you explain that you've lost your install discs, perhaps they'll sell you a replacement, since your computer is still under warranty.

You can enter the serial number into Apple's support page to confirm it's still under warranty (obviously it IS, since the computer hasn't existed for more than a year), and if it's not registered go ahead and register it in your name to be thorough.

Alternately, there's always eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/APPLE-INTEL-IMA...ryZ80258QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

...this is $26 and claims worldwide shipping. A retail copy of Tiger will NOT do you any good, as said, because it won't boot Intel Macs--they all shipped with Tiger anyway.

Before you do any of the above, I'd give the mini install discs you have a shot; even if they won't actually install on the Mac, if they'll at least boot it to the point that it'll refuse to install, you should be able to use the password reset utility. Here's the Apple article on the topic (password reset stuff is down at the bottom):

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106156

Alternately, if it refuses to boot from the mini restore disc, you can try to get somebody to LOAN you a set of Intel iMac install discs, with which you can do the above password reset or just a clean install. You don't even need to keep them, though I assume it'd be easy enough (and perfectly legitimate) to make a copy while you had them.
 
piltupso said:
Maybe I missed the sarcasm, but how could it be "perfectly legitimate" to make copies of Apple system disks borrowed from someone else?
Because, in this case, it's the same as making copies of discs in your possession. The owner of the iMac has a valid license for Mac OS X, just no discs.
 
reh said:
Because, in this case, it's the same as making copies of discs in your possession. The owner of the iMac has a valid license for Mac OS X, just no discs.
Yes. The computer shipped with a valid license of 10.4, it in fact still has 10.4 installed--perfectly legitimately, and legally. The (potential) owner just doesn't happen to have discs to actually reinstall with. There is, in fact, not even a way to BUY a set of discs from Apple (through normal retail channels, anyway) that will install on this computer, because again, by definition, it shipped with a license.

It may or may not be *technically* legal to copy someone else's restore discs (I'd have to read though the entire license), but it is functionally perfectly legitimate. It's just a matter of lacking physical media for software you have full legal ownership of.

It would, in fact, be impossible to get that computer *without* a 10.4 license, since Apple does not sell such a thing.
 
Some Bad News

BAD NEWS.

the computer turned out to be a G5, but it doesn´t have the install discs anyway, but heres the bad news... a friend bought the computer and now the keyboard it doesn´t even work.. only a third party optical mouse glows, but it doesnt move the cursor, I connected other optical mouse and it doesnt glow... it was worse before,
we tried a few install discs from other computers with no luck, it didnt even startup from the discs, all of them....

LATER.....it only sounded the start up chime and showed a black screen with the fan running at full speed... please help me.. my friend its a first time mac user and hes very sad about buying a computer that only looks nice.....

I think its a Usb problem, it only have the enough energy to iluminate the optcial mouse, but no t enough to make it work and the keyboard doesnt work either( the caps lock key doesn´t glow) maybe the usb ports ¨burned ¨ somehow..

..and because the keyboard doesnt function I cant zap the pram and that kind of things...
 
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