Clean Drive, will software reinstall?

[shamilton32]

I am having a lot of problems with my macbook and I am ready to just have it back to the way it was when I first bought it. Does anyone know how to wipe out the drive and start over from scratch. Create a new admin and have the orginal software installed. I dont care if I lose was it on the current drive.

I do have the two disks that came with the computer, have tried those and must be doing it wrong cause all it does is update software.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[TheStu]

Ok, drop in the MacBook restore disk 1, and then restart your computer.

After it turns off, before it can turn back on, start holding down C in order to have it boot from the drive.

Once it loads from the disk, you want to tell it to reformat and install and there you go. Once you get into OS X, you will have to re-enter your info, and then update it, re-download your software and all that.

 

[shamilton32]

Problem

When the disk comes up it says nothing about reformatting just welcome to the mac os x installer. that is the process that I have going through but like I said all it does it update software. Yes I am a newbie to mac so you may have to give me a little more detail if possible.

Thanks
Steve

 

[shamilton32]

nm prob

I think I got it

 

[TheStu]

OK, good to hear. You have to hit customize or options or something like that at some point, I forgot about that, sorry.

 

[Wolfpup]

To format the drive you have to boot off the CD and then launch Disk Utility from the drop down menu at the top of the screen, and use that to erase it. Just do a quick erase, as they're no reason to zero the drive in this case.

And yes, you'd lose everything on the drive doing this, so back up any personal files, etc. first.