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We have a mac mini in the office we need to use. When you boot, it asks for a disk password. They guy who set it left, and he doesn't remember it.

We tried booting with Cmd-S, but the mac doesnt go into single user mode. We found an old Snow Leapard disk, and we can boot with this (by holding down option), it works for a bit, then says you need to restart your computer. when we do this, and restart, it says "your computer was restarted because of a problem" then it just goes back to the "enter disk password" again. I.e it doesnt seem possible to re-install OSX from DVD. We cant find a way to get a newer DVD or installable OS.

I guess we need to do is format its disk some how. Is there any way to do this?

We don't have any other disks. It would appear that its impossible to buy Mountain Lion, as we don't have another mac to access the app store - only PCs.

We don't have any spare HDs, but could buy one if needed. The replacement process looks risky, and we dont have the special tools.

We don't care about the data.

We dont know what version of OSX is installed, but its probably 1-2 years old. We dont know what kind of mac mini it is, but it is metal, with a DVD slot, and a plastic round base which can unscrew, HDMI and displayport.

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  • Couldn't you pull out the hard disk and format it in another machine? Or boot with a Linux disk? After the hard disk has been wiped, an OS X installation should work easily.
    – slhck
    Aug 17, 2013 at 13:05
  • Thanks Slhck - taking the disk out looks risky, and we dont have the special screwdrivers. Booting with Linux is an interesting, but it looks like this newer all metal mac mini has no linux install ability.
    – wingnut
    Aug 17, 2013 at 13:23
  • You don't have to install Linux. You can probably just format the disk with GParted from a Live CD.
    – slhck
    Aug 17, 2013 at 13:26

1 Answer 1

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If the Mini isn't too old enough you can connect it to the internet and reboot in recovery mode by holding down Cmd-R. When it boots (it will take longer so expect that) you will see an option to select the disk utility. From here you can reformat the drive. Once that is done you can install the OS version that was last installed on it from Apple's servers.

ps A newer Mac won't install older versions of the OS so that could be the issue with the Snow Leopard disk.

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