MAC OSX reinstall question

[honkee]

Hey ive never dealt witha macintosh before.
A really good client at my salon found a G4 laptop after moving into her new condo.
She would love to give the laptop to her brother but the laptop is password protected.
Shes bought a tiger disk and needs me to reinstall the osx for her?

any input appreciated since i cant even get pass the pasword screen
many thanks in advance

 

[nweaver]

put in disk
reboot laptop and hold the "option" key when you hear the "BONG" startup noise. It should then ask you about what disk to start from. Select the CD Rom and you should be able to get the rest.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

All I did on my Macbook is put the DVD in the drive reset the computer and held the C key down.

 

[KeithP]

If she has a Tiger install disc, she can reset the password. Pop the disc in the drive and restart the machine with the "C" key held down. This should cause it to boot from the install DVD. After it boots you should see some menu options (you may have to click through a screen or two to get to this point) at the top of the screen. One of the menus has a reset password option. Of course, if you don't care what is on the disc currently you can just do an install and wipe the drive.

A couple of other things...the Tiger disc is a DVD so if the laptop only has a CD drive it won't work. I believe Apple has an exchange program to get Tiger CDs if you need that. If it is a relatively recent laptop that shouldn't be a problem. Another possible issue is what version of OS X came on the laptop originally. If it is OS X 10.3 or earlier, booting from the Tiger disc shouldn't be a problem. However, if the laptop originally shipped with OS X 10.4 there could be issues if the version of Tiger that originally shipped on the laptop was newer than what is on the install disc. Not a likely problem, just a heads up.

-Keith