Glenn Fleishman weighs in with some excellent advice on what to do if you inherit or buy a Mac, to make sure you don’t end up with an unusable doorstop down the line. Worth a scan, just to get the gist of the issue, and a more detailed read if you are in that situation.
What you need to do when you inherit a Mac
And since modern (post 2012 or so, post 2010 if firmware updated?) Macs can all do an install-from-internet, it’s even easier.
Always wipe and clean install an inherited computer, is my policy, just because nobody can be trusted to have no malware or ludicrously bad anything on a computer…
(But that WON’T get you past a firmware password, which should be checked for and disabled immediately.)
O.o
Having trouble wrapping my head the advice in the article. Asking for original sale receipts from people on ebay or craigslist is laughable.
Whatever happened to, “wipe all partitions and do a reinstall from scratch”? Which works every time for me when I get a machine that’s password locked.
I’ve purchased a half dozen mac laptops over the years, and have never seen anything like what is being described in this … AND I couldn’t begin to locate a receipt for any of them! Even if — a new drive, a new sys.
Well, almost nobody uses a firmware password, so you wouldn’t.
And presumably as an enthusiast, you don’t buy a Mac and then try to use the existing install and software forever, yes?