Reinstall OS and Deleted....HELP!

[jbellinger1977]

Ok so here is the story...I got a new imac a month ago and decided to sell my old one (imac dual core 2, 2ghz, 3gb) to a friend of mine....in tying to wipe the mac clean he somehow deleted everything including the os. here is what i have tried
1) I tried to install from the original imac disks, after i choose the language it says "MAC OS cant be installed on this computer"
2) I tried to use time machine on my new imac and then boot the old one from that but it says "you can't restore this backup disk because it was created by a different model of mac"
3) I booted from my laptop (via firewire) then went in to disk utility and verified/repaired the disk, it then says "Volume appears to be OK....updating boot support partitions for the volume as required' but when i restart i am back to the file and "?" mark!
4) step 3 repeated and partioned and made sure guid was checked!
5) reset pram and nvram....

my brain is fried.....any ideas????

 

[blevins321]

Ok, I hate to ask the dumb question, but are you sure that you used the correct disks for that particular Mac? That model came with Leopard right? You could have the friend pay $29 and buy a Snow Leopard disk. (Amazon HERE). That way you have a universal disk for it that will work with any Mac (that came with 10.6.3 or before..it won't work for your iMac because it came with a newer version.)

 

[jbellinger1977]

Ok, I hate to ask the dumb question, but are you sure that you used the correct disks for that particular Mac? That model came with Leopard right? You could have the friend pay $29 and buy a Snow Leopard disk. (Amazon HERE). That way you have a universal disk for it that will work with any Mac (that came with 10.6.3 or before..it won't work for your iMac because it came with a newer version.)

i did use the correct disks, they are leopard 10.5. is the snow leopard disk different then my disks that came with my new imac?

is there any other way?

 

[blevins321]

i did use the correct disks, they are leopard 10.5. is the snow leopard disk different then my disks that came with my new imac?

is there any other way?

Yeah Snow Leopard is the current version of MacOS and you'll notice very nice speed improvements with it compared to Leopard. It also takes up less space because the universal apps were optimized to Intel-only.

A way to get him functional again could be to clone your new iMac drive to a USB disk or something and then restore the image to the old iMac's hard drive. You could then just create a new user and delete yourself from the old system.

 

[MacHamster68]

yes there is a difference , if you use grey disc you need to use the ones that came with that specific model
and you can only install with the origial grey disc's that came with THAT Mac and that Mac came with leopard or even tiger originally (you did not mention the year it was build or if its a alu or white )

so you either have to use the original grey leopard/ tiger disc or a retail version of snow leopard ,but the grey snow leopard disc of your new iMac wont work on the old iMac

 

[jbellinger1977]

A way to get him functional again could be to clone your new iMac drive to a USB disk or something and then restore the image to the old iMac's hard drive. You could then just create a new user and delete yourself from the old system.

I had read about that in a few places but i'm not sure on how to to it...I have a external firewire drive, can i use it to do the clone....where can i find the cloning directions...

wait i tried something called carbon copy and another called superduper...when i had my macbook in target mode...and it didn't work! is that what you mean by cloning? or will that not work because it is a macbook to a imac?

I know I'm a mess! lol, thanks for all the help so far though!

 

[blevins321]

Easiest method (IMHO) is to boot your Macbook (or your new iMac would work too - the latter would surely give him Snow Leopard) from its own install disks. Open disk utility and (pardon the paraphrasing as I'm on my Windows work computer) File>New>Image. Select the internal drive as the source and pick a filename on your Firewire drive to save as.

Let it run - it will take an hour or more most likely.

On his, repeat the process, except select the saved Firewire file as the source, and his formatted Macintosh HD drive as the destination.

Let it run - again .

Then boot up and it should work fine.