You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
Trying to reset my old IMac to factory settings so it can be erased and recycled. I no longer have the os disc from 2010 which seems to be required for reset. is there a work around? I want to get rid of this old behemoth but can't until it's wiped!
The 2010's were a problem because they were right on the edge between the install media and switching over to download only.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202313
If yours was not updated, you can't do anything without the original install DVD; if your firmware was, recovery may or may not work. I did some extensive testing at the time and the efforts to erase/reset were only successful one out of 5 different tries.
If you can boot from an external clone, you could just use your Disk Utility and try to erase the drive - that might work.
The 2010's were a problem because they were right on the edge between the install media and switching over to download only.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202313
If yours was not updated, you can't do anything without the original install DVD; if your firmware was, recovery may or may not work. I did some extensive testing at the time and the efforts to erase/reset were only successful one out of 5 different tries.
If you can boot from an external clone, you could just use your Disk Utility and try to erase the drive - that might work.
If you don't have the Recovery HD volume on your startup drive, you can create a bootable copy of the macOS installer, which includes all the same recovery utilities as the Recovery HD volume.
Ref: How to Make a Bootable Flash Installer of OS X or macOS - Lifewire
how do i erase my mac to factory settings without a disc?
