Important: If your computer came with both Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X installed on the hard disk, you should follow the steps in this article. If your computer came with only Mac OS 9.1 or earlier installed on the hard disk, you should follow the steps outlined in article 24270: "Apple Software Restore: How to Perform a Single Disc Restoration."
Warning: Apple Software Restore will completely erase the contents of your hard disk or disk partition. You should back up important files and documents that you want to keep before using Apple Software Restore.
Follow these steps to reinstall the operating systems and application programs that came with your computer:
- 1. Make sure you have made backup copies of files and documents you want to keep. You should save these copies to a removable medium (CD-RW disc, floppy disk, ZIP disk, and so forth), or to a file server or your iDisk.
2. Find the Restore CDs that came with your computer. There may be five or more.
3. Insert disc 1.
4. If your computer is using Mac OS 9.1, choose Restart from the Special menu to restart the computer. If your computer is using Mac OS X, choose Restart from the Apple menu.
5. Press and hold the C key until the "Welcome to Macintosh" message appears. (This key allows the computer to start up from the CD.)
Figure 1 Multiple disc Apple Software Restore
6. Select the disk or volume onto which you want to restore the software, then click Restore. This process could take 20 to 30 minutes.
Figure 2 When prompted by Apple Software restore, insert the next disk
7. When prompted, remove the disc from the drive, and insert the next one as indicated on the screen.
8. When this process is finished, restart your computer to use the new software.