Second MacPro with no boot disk help

S

snickerdoodle

Registered
My husband just got a MacPro from his company, they went bankrupt and the machine was up for grabs. We could not find its original software and I assumed (foolishly) that we could use mine from my G5 Power PC.

Has 10.4.11, 2X2 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon | 3GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

At first I thought I could just remove old files and removed old user accounts. All was well until I rebooted. All my settings disappeared; email settings, Airport connection to internet etc... Tried setting up a new user but same thing again.

It had been networked at the office which may be part of the problem. I'd like to wipe it clean and start fresh. But we only have OS 10.4.

Do I need a professional or is there a workaround?
 
You can get 10.4 Retail disks for a very reasonable price--far less than a professional would charge you to look at the computer. This is in particular since 10.6 is dancing around the corner and most have gone to 10.5.

So, if you search on reputable sites from reputable dealers, you should be able to find a retail disk. Rarely, you can find--or pry from Apple/Apple Store--a "grey" Installation disk specific to your computer. You want to be careful to make sure you are buying a legitimate copy that will work for your computer.

--J.D.
 
You'll only need the install discs - the ones that are shipped with a Mac are always hardware specific, so the ones for that G5 PPC will only work on that version of G5 PPC models, not on any other model.

As Doctor X says, 10.4 retail install discs should be available for cheap. But - those are always with PPC code, and you will need the intel version of it. So 10.4 retail discs wouldn't do - 10.5 would do.

What you can do before getting those discs is boot in the Mac Pro, and install Mac OS X 10.4.11 intel combo update (download link) on top of the existing system. That may be able to fix whatever files were removed from its system.
 
Interesting, so the 10.4 Retail were not available for Intel? I gather this is understandable since Intel Macs would be shipping with a 10.4+ Installation disk, why would anyone buy one?

--J.D.
 
The only way to get the lost Mac OS X 10.4 install discs was to call Apple or possibly get them from a service provider. There was no need for releasing a universal 10.4 retail disc.

(And thank the universal binaries and the added localizations for the 10.5 install disc and the actual install size...)
 
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