[PaulInBoston]

Hi,

I just bought a used imac at a flea market and I was told the systems he was selling would prompt for password etc. The company sold off a number of the systems and I want to stop the prompting for the name and password and wipe the disk and reinstall fresh. I disconnected the hard drive and it won't boot off of the CD and no matter what I do it keeps prompting me for the info. I have been seeking answers all over the net and just would like to know how to completely wipe everything and start fresh

I'm more familiar with working on PC machines and is there a "bios" on the Mac that I need to clear. I keep hearing stuff about the Pram but no matter what I do it keeps prompting me.

It's currently loaded with OSX and I have a OS 9 CD I'm trying to install.

All there jumpers or a button the motherboard or anything else I need to do?

Thanks For Any Help You Can Offer.

Paul

[Ozzpot]

What do you mean "disconnected the hard drive?" You mean you physically unplugged the hard drive? You shouldn't have to do this.

Have you tried simply putting the CD in and rebooting while holding the C key? This should force the system to boot from CD.

For future reference, no software issue should EVER require you to open up a mac, unplug internal hardware, fiddle with jumpers, or any crap like that. Soldering iron troubleshooting is very much a PC thing.

I have been using Macs for 5 years, still have the only 3 I have ever owned. They all work, the oldest one (a G3 imac) has been wiped and reinstalled and booted from CD and all that dozens of times, including to fix a serious boot failure fault. I have NEVER EVER seen the inside of a mac other than when installing RAM.

[greenG4]

Agreed with the above. No reason to unplug your HD. It may be the wrong CD for that system. Most macs will not boot a restore CD for another model Mac. Do you hear the CD even try to spin up when you atempt to boot from it? If not, your CD drive could be toast. These are only two of ENUMERABLE possibilities.