General Question

richardhenry's avatar

How do you display the Mac OS X welcome screen on next boot?

Asked by richardhenry (12692points) January 25th, 2008
3 responses
“Great Question” (5points)

I’m reinstalling OS X Leopard on an iMac I’m selling, and want the first thing the new owner sees to be the welcome screen and video.

Is there a special way to do this, or do I just force shutdown the iMac once the welcome screen appears (there’s no option to just “shut down”).

Thanks in advance!

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Answers

jrpowell's avatar

Just so you know.. There is a way to do this. I read about it a few years ago. I just don’t remember how to do it. I’m not getting much with Google but it can be done.

I will keep looking.. Now I’m curious.

jrpowell's avatar

OK… I gave up with Google and asked around..

This is what I got…

“Yes, you can do that. The installer places a hidden file called .AppleSetupDone in /private/var/db. Remove that file (rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone in the Terminal) and the Setup Assistant will run the next time the machine is booted.

If you’re going to do a clean install, though, just do the install up to the point that the assistant starts, quit it (CMD-Q) and shut down the machine. The assistant should run again at next boot. To be doubly-sure, you could boot off the installer disc again and check for the file using Terminal.”

richardhenry's avatar

Awesome, thanks. Just shutting down the machine without running the setup assistant seems to work okay. Would running the setup assistant if user accounts exist on the machine (by deleting the .AppleSetupDone file) remove all user accounts? How would this work? Just interesting to know.

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