# boot option screen picture of lock ? EFI password?



## macattack600 (Jun 9, 2011)

saw a picture of a lock would'nt let me select anything from the boot option menu had a arrow but would'nt work.  Could this be because it's the wrong the restore dvds for the macbook I have I purchased 2 from a puter shop it said macbook for tiger I have one of the early macbooks so i figured it would work.  Or is it a EFI password issue??


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## DeltaMac (Jun 9, 2011)

When you boot holding the option key, and you only see a padlock, that means that there's a firmware password set.
The firmware password prevents you from booting from other media.
Do you know what that firmware password is?
Does the MacBook belong to you?
I will offer some help to clear that firmware password, if you can tell me something about the history of your Macbook, with some kind of explanation about why you don't know what the firmware password might be....


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## macattack600 (Jun 10, 2011)

Well if you ever seen me post about all the cracked screens like the ibooks and this macbook I get alot of them school district surplus. I think you may remeber me asking you alot of questions about ibooks with cracked screens. Well I got a macbook with cracked screen.  The thing is this I did a tiger to leopard upgrade install with no problem I was able to wipe the drive clean from wanting to do a downgrade back to tiger from the installer but it would'nt let me install from the gray cds I have I bought them from a used puter shop cause they said 10.4.9 and macbook so I figured if I had a early macbook it should work (a1181 2.0ghz white). Well it said cannot install software on this machine or something after I already wiped the drive.  I figured maybe when I tried going into the boot option menu it different that's when I saw the lock so I reset the firmware password in the installer and still saw it . Then I held the power button unitl pram reset. I'm thinking maybe the AHT version is incorrect it's 3A128    2
z691-5993A (anyway to check that I don't know). I was thinking mabye the disc was doing it or am I still have a firmware password problem it showed 1 time when I created a new firmware password it made a new one succesfully. hmm? I have the original password when tiger was installed but now the drive is blank.


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## DeltaMac (Jun 10, 2011)

You can reset a firmware password by changing the RAM amount in the MacBook, then boot while resetting PRAM. Let the boot chime sound a minimum of 3 times, and the firmware password is reset (if there is one)
You need to do a little more research on MacBooks....
One difficulty that you would have with Apple's hardware tests on MacBooks - each logic board generation takes a different version of the hardware test, and as near as I can count, there's 7 different versions just for the model called A1181. The various versions of the hardware test will only work on a single logic board type, and not on any others, AFAIK.
And - although some of the grey installer disks will actually boot several different MacBook models - booting does NOT mean that you can install the software, but you can run utilities, such as Disk Utility to erase a hard drive. Then - if you try to install OS X, it just tells you it can't install on the computer (so you have the wrong installer version)
MUCH simpler to use a commercial OS X installer (one of the black label disks for 10.5)
If you can find a 10.5.6 installer (the last one), then you can install on all A1181, although probably not the 2009 MacBook models...
Notice I don't mention 10.4 (Tiger) - Apple never released a commercial version of Tiger that would install on an Intel Mac. You can't install Tiger on a MacBook, unless you have the exact DVD that originally came with that MacBook, or the exact same disk that came with that model. And, three different MacBook models came with some version of 10.4
MacBook (the original)
MacBook, Late 2006
MacBook, Mid 2007 (which happens to be the only model that your AHT 3A128 will test)

As always, Mactracker is a great knowledge base for this kind of stuff.
There's other sources on line, but I like Mactracker.


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