Reinstalling OSX Mavericks - 2008 Macbook

Kainz · 21 Oct 2014 at 14:34

Hey all,

I have a late 2008 13" Alu Macbook that I've had since 2009. It's been my trusted friend ever since purchase, but it is now rather slow especially with Mavericks.

The machine first arrived with Snow Leopard, and has had over the top OS installs ever since and I feel it is now time to start off from scratch. OSX presently takes quite a while to start and I see that beachball a lot when doing simple tasks on the OS. However whilst this is all easily done on a PC, I haven't the faintest idea where to start on a mac.

Could anyone point me to a guide or some resources to get me started?

MagicBoy · 21 Oct 2014 at 15:07

Short version :
1) Back everything up.
2) Re-install Snow Leopard from the recovery disks. Press C at the startup chime to boot from the DVD. Select the Language then choose Utilities > Disk Utility. Select your hard drive (usually called Macintosh HD) and then click the Erase tab. Click Erase to erase and reformat your hard drive. When complete quit Disk Utility and click Continue to install Snow Leopard.
3) Install iLife off the extra disks if required.
4) Update to 10.6.8 via Software Update to enable the App Store, then install Mavericks.

Kainz · 21 Oct 2014 at 16:48

Much appreciated mate, shall do that tonight! It would be good to get a clean OS again.

With regards to the above steps, I assume I cannot just bypass SL and install Mavericks?

MagicBoy · 21 Oct 2014 at 19:49

The above is the official way. It may well be possible to make a USB flash drive with Mavericks on it.

Rameses · 21 Oct 2014 at 20:01

Can't you simply re-download Mavericks from the App Store and thus make a bootable usb from there, bypasses SL, cleaner install.

As already stated though, important to load Disk Utility and format that messy drive.

Kainz · 22 Oct 2014 at 10:18

Rameses said:
Can't you simply re-download Mavericks from the App Store and thus make a bootable usb from there, bypasses SL, cleaner install.

As already stated though, important to load Disk Utility and format that messy drive.

I ended up doing this and it worked perfectly. Used Disk Utility to make a bootable USB drive and put Mavericks on that before doing what was mentioned above.

On a 250gb HD, I have 230gb free with the OS and some basic apps+data installed. The whole process was smoother than I thought