Factory Reset

[whiskeryron]

Due to my own stupidity in adjusting my Mac Desktop, I need to reset to factory condition. Could someone please talk me through the procedure to do this. TIA.

[Zacs-Master]

Are you sure? What is it you’ve done?

[IJKLM]

If you really do need to do that, then the broad, outline procedure is something like this:

1. find a USB stick, or USB disk with capacity of 8GB upwards that you are prepared to completely wipe

2. Re-format that to be a installation disk - this will involve downloading a 5-6GB installation file from Apple.

3. Restart the Mac and tell it to do a new install from the USB drive .

I can walk you through the procedure in detail, but it would be good to know why you think this rather drastic procedure is necessary.

Do you, for example have a Time Machine backup?

Have you tried some of the disk utilities to repair the drive?

Also, it would be good to know what kind of Mac - Mac OS version number - amount of disk space and so on. This is probably not essential, but might flag up some issues

Good luck

[whiskeryron]

Hi Zacs, recently watching movies on Amazon Prime all very dark, tried to adjust colour contrast, now colours all over the place, trying without success to get back to basic.

[whiskeryron]

If you look at my avatar you can see the prob with colour contrast.

[IJKLM]

I suspect this is not a system issue. It could be hardware.
When I took apart and then upgraded my 27-inch iMac, part of that process involved moving a cable that drives the display and the first attempt was bad, giving rise to 'funny colours'.

Re-assembling it more carefully corrected the problem.

I'm not suggesting that you take the thing apart, only that display problems tend to be hardware-based rather than software.

Nevertheless, the following links might help - I did a search on
"mac screen colours all wrong"

https://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f65/solved-weird-colours-on-mac-screen-374312.html

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/10805/iMac+screen+turns+funny+colors+and+computer+itself+freezes.

https://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-troubleshoot-faulty-display-output-in-os-x/

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201899

http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/29/fix-dull-color-contrast-on-mac-screen-calibrate-display/

[IJKLM]

I looked at the avatar image and it looks fine - perhaps slightly low contrast and a tad green.

Probably the last link above will help.

http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/29/fix-dull-color-contrast-on-mac-screen-calibrate-display/

[whiskeryron]

Don't know how to re-adjust.

[IJKLM]

Copy-pasted from the above link:


This works on any Mac and with any version of Mac OS X:

Launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu and choose “Displays”
Click the “Color” tab and then click the “Calibrate” button
Check the “Expert Mode” box at the bottom of the screen and click continue
Read the directions carefully and walk through the 7 step process of calibrating the display, save the profile and it will automatically be selected as the default

The difference in color representation and contrast should be significant after display calibration, you can immediately check the difference by clicking between the default “Color LCD” and the newly created calibration profile. Black and white levels should be more accurate, contrasts should be better, and colors should be more vibrant and accurate.

This isn’t a permanent change, and at any time you can recalibrate the display if you want to, and you can also return to the default color profile just by selecting “Color LCD” in the profile list.

[whiskeryron]

Avatar pic not clear at all, originally clear fine pic.

[IJKLM]

Ahhhh...

then it's could be the resolution.

Go to Apple menu --> System settings ---> displays

select the default 'Display' tab and choose the 'Default for display' option.

If that makes the screen icons too big, then choose the 'Scaled' option and go for a 'More Space' option to make the display higher resolution.

try this link:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/7-macos-display-settings-to-help-you-see-your-mac-better/

[IJKLM]

Some movie Apps can change the default resolution and colour settings on the screen.
Usually they revert back to the original after you quit the App, but it seems you may have changed them manually.

First, there is no need to do a full factory reset.

Try to get to know the Display settings control panel.

See if you can revert everything to the default values.

If not, let us know what screen you have: CRT / LCD / Native Apple or third party. Also the precise model of the Mac (Go to Apple menu and 'About this Mac' copy-paste the information there, but leave out the serial number and we can advise you of the best settings.