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Trashpicked iMac

Shattered68

Shattered68

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 11, 2023
28
6
Hey everyone,

Im new to Mac and my buddy found a 2007 iMac on the curb and gave it to me. I was following a factory reset tutorial because the person who had it last did not wipe it. So I deleted MacOS from disk utility and went to reinstall it but i cant because it makes me sign into Apple but it keeps saying try again later. I was talking to apple support and after like 3 hours of trying to download a bootable installer but when I go to install it to a usb drive nothing happens. Any help??
 
What instructions are you following to create a bootable installer on a USB drive?
 
One tip that shouldn't be overlooked is that when using old OS installers, you may have to spoof the date on your machine so that it believes it is not expired. It's 2023 and I still be installing Lion n s***. Just did it last week.

Also, don't expect a lot from an '07 iMac. I suppose there's a reason it was on the curb. I'm not saying that plenty of people don't make use of them but they are from another era that has passed these Macs by. They're more of a hobby item than anything actually "useful" today.
 
OSX Mavericks might be the last OS on that machine? It should have an internal CD? Check eBay to see if you can find OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on bootable CD, one of the greatest OS'es Apple ever made. That would be a trip down memory lane.
 
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Snow Leopard is available straight from the Macintosh Garden. Free download. Should be easy to put that on a USB drive, use the disk utility to completely format the iMac’s internal drive and start fresh. You don’t want that other system’s recovery partition remaining.

Keep in mind it is slow. Real slow. That iMac is running a slow spinner through SATA II. I wouldn’t bother with an SSD upgrade. It’s likely you will be bored of this machine in a month or two and will want something more modern as 2017-2020 iMacs can be had rather cheap.
 
MrCheeto said:
Snow Leopard is available straight from the Macintosh Garden. Free download. Should be easy to put that on a USB drive, use the disk utility to completely format the iMac’s internal drive and start fresh. You don’t want that other system’s recovery partition remaining.

Keep in mind it is slow. Real slow. That iMac is running a slow spinner through SATA II. I wouldn’t bother with an SSD upgrade. It’s likely you will be bored of this machine in a month or two and will want something more modern as 2017-2020 iMacs can be had rather cheap.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah I’m not expecting anything from it I already have a main computer l, just looking for something to mess with. and yea I’ll look into what you said I really appreciate it and if I need more help I’ll come back here.
 
Bigwaff said:
What instructions are you following to create a bootable installer on a USB drive?
Click to expand...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
and some YouTube videos as well
I got to the point in the video where is ask for Apple ID. I log in than it says temporarily unavailable. In the comments I see someone had the same problem and took it to the tech place. But why spend unnecessary money when I can come here and try to fix it.
 
Again, when installing certain OS’, you have to change the date on your Mac or it won’t proceed. Look at the date your version of OS X was released and add about 8-months to that date. Go by the point value. Meaning, not Mac OS X version 10.10 but release 10.10.5 or whatever the last point release is for that version.
 
MrCheeto said:
Again, when installing certain OS’, you have to change the date on your Mac or it won’t proceed. Look at the date your version of OS X was released and add about 8-months to that date. Go by the point value. Meaning, not Mac OS X version 10.10 but release 10.10.5 or whatever the last point release is for that version.
Click to expand...
I don't have an OS installed. I deleted it to clear everything that was on it. Now it wont let me redownload it because when I log into the machine with my Apple ID it says temporally unavailable. The trouble I'm having is really with getting an OS from online on one computer, putting it on a flash drive, than putting that flash drive into my machine and booting it up.
 
That’s what I mean. The restoration partition is part of an OS. You’ll want that gone if you go the route of Snow Leopard, since that is the last OS that is installed without any online dependency.

So what installer is currently on your restoration partition? Meaning, when you do the restoration option and it says “click to install ____”, what OS does it list?

Since you asked, here it is: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/apple-osx-snow-leopard
 
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El Capitan. And im looking at the link you posted and im following the intructions on how to turn it into a bootable USb drive but it wont let me partition my flash drive.
 
BTW, a bootable Mac drive should be Mac OS Extended format with GUID partition table.

Anyway, here’s a shot in the dark. Worth a shot.

Boot into the El Cap restore partition. Look for Utilities at the top and open Terminal.

Within Terminal, type:

date 101010102018

and press the Return key.

Carry on with the install.
 
switched the date but when I go to install I get an error message "An error occured whiile preparing the installation. Try running this apllication again" it was worth a shot tho
 
Try a different date. Seems something different has happened now that you’ve changed the date. The first four digits are the month and day, the last four is the year. This this is 10/10/2018. Maybe try a few months prior like 0310.
 
That’s really strange. Moving on to Snow Leopard, I suppose.

What application are you using to format your USB drive? What sort of error is that causing?
 
So to download and do everything to get snow leapord In using a MacBook air M1. And im following the directions of the website you linked but when I go to partition the drive in the setting of the Macbook its greyed out and wont let me click it.
 
Can you post an image of what you’re seeing?

Apple is on a mission to dumb everything down because muh “we know better than you simple plebs”, so you may want to check this; while in Disk Utility, press Command+2. Your device list should expand showing drives AND the partitions on the drives.

You should be trying to partition the USB DRIVE and it is currently only showing you the partition.
 
Ok so from the looks of it you have the Partition selected. If you click the option above the partition name (which would correspond to the name of the USB drive itself) does that make the option available?

At any rate, you may want to simply use the Erase option. Be sure to drill into the options of whichever operation you choose (erase or partition) to find the Partition Table or Format option so you can choose “GUID Partition”. It’s easy to find the “Mac OS Extended” partition format but it that must have a GUID table to be bootable.
 
Im not sure what you mean in the first part. But I went ahead and used the Erase option and formattted it to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
 
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