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I picked up an old Mid-2007 MacBook a few months back, and I have been playing around with it. But, the one thing that I have not found are the original software restore disks, in iso or physical media. I been looking online, and in forums.

I currently have 1.5 GB of RAM on installed.

Any help finding the software restore disks would be appreciated.

**UPDATE

I know that it has been a few months but here is a quick update and a question.

So I did a lot of poking around and I found out how to install OS X Mavericks on this computer. LINK

But, I am trying to install Windows Vista on the computer and every time that I boot from the install it says CD-DVD Driver Missing. So I tried putting the drivers on the installation drive but it did nothing. Any Help Appreciated.

Varun Gaddam
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2 Answers2

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The last version of OS X compatible with your Mac is OS X Lion 10.7.5. I assume that you have not purchased Lion from the Apple App Store and therefore can not download a copy. The path to store the Mac from scratch would be as follows.

  1. Install OS X Snow Leopard 10.6. AFAIK, Apple no longer sells this DVD. You can try to purchase a used copy. A free ISO can be downloaded from the internet. You can then either burn to a DVD or create a bootable USB flash drive installer.
  2. Upgrade to OS X 10.6.8. This is a free download from Apple. I should point out you probably will not be able to download this update from a OS X 10.6 install. In other words, the version of Safari is to old. You should attempt to download to a flash drive in advance or use another machine to download to a flash drive.
  3. Upgrade to OS X 10.7. This is available from Apple for 20 USD. This purchase is for a download of the software to upgrade from Snow Leopard.
  4. Upgrade to OS X 10.7.5. This is a free download from Apple.

Because of the age of the Mac, you should consider abandoning OS X altogether in favor of version of Linux. What would be available for your Mac depends on the amount of RAM installed.

Debian with desktop has a 512 MB minimum and recommends 2 GB or RAM.
Xubuntu with desktop has a has a 512 MB minimum and recommends 2 GB or RAM.

The current Debian ISO can be downloaded from here.

Ubuntu is a popular Linux. However installing requires 4 GB of RAM. Xubuntu is basically the same, but with a Desktop interface that requires less RAM.

Note: Due to the age of your Mac, Linux probably should be installed to BIOS boot. I have installed both Debian and Xubuntu on a 2007 iMac with 4 GB of RAM.

I assume you have the memory split as 1 GB + 512 MB. The maximum memory is 3 GB. You could upgrade by replacing the 512 MB with either 1 GB or 2 GB. OWC seems to still sell memory for your model.

You probably could install 32 bit Windows 10. The 64 bit version would require a memory upgrade to at least 2 GB. The drivers can be downloaded from this Apple website. I was able to install 64 bit Windows 10 on a 2007 iMac using the 32 bit Windows 7 drivers. You can download and try Windows 10 without a purchase, but to keep using requires purchasing a license. IMO, Windows probably would run to slow to justify the purchase of a license.

If you attempt to install a current release of either Linux or Windows 10, you should expect to run into unforeseen problems which may be solved by posting a new question.

David Anderson
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  • I have tried installing linux on it, but it never met the system requirements. What distro do you recommend – Varun Gaddam Feb 17 '21 at 16:56
  • Thanks man, I have installed win7, but I did not know how to get about win10. Thanks for the helpful guide! :) – Varun Gaddam Feb 17 '21 at 18:35
  • There still might be a chance that if you have Windows 7 installed and activated, then you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free. At least I was able to do this last year. I do not know if this is still possible. I assume you had 32 bit Windows 7 installed? – David Anderson Feb 17 '21 at 18:45
  • Yes I did have 32 bit, but I already zeroed out the partition. – Varun Gaddam Feb 17 '21 at 18:49
  • You should enter the product key at the Windows 7 download website and see if you are eligible to download 64 bit Windows 7. – David Anderson Feb 17 '21 at 18:52
  • I have done that, but every time I do that it says that there was an error – Varun Gaddam Feb 17 '21 at 20:05
  • Apparently, downloading Windows 7 is not currently available. The same is true for Windows 10. I assume this is a temporary problem. Are you aware, the current release of Windows 10 will accept Windows 7 product keys. I just tried this with the Win10_20H2_English_x64.iso file, which is the current 64 bit Windows 10 release. – David Anderson Feb 17 '21 at 20:49
  • I should also point out that booting the Windows 10 installer on your Mac is a bit tricky. If you burn the iso to a DVD, but you may find you can not boot from the DVD. If this happens, one solution would be to remove the EFI boot option from the ISO before burning the DVD. You also can not boot the Windows 10 installer from a USB port. Another solution would be first install Debian where a partition is created to hold the Windows 10 installation files. You then can use Grub to boot the Windows 10 installer. Once booted, the installer can then replace Debian with Windows 10. – David Anderson Feb 17 '21 at 21:06
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EveryMac.com says:

Pre-Installed MacOS: X 10.4.9 (8P4112) Maximum MacOS: X 10.7.5*

*This system can run the last version of OS X 10.7 "Lion" if upgraded to at least 2 GB of RAM.

All versions of MacOS from 10.4 to 10.7 were sold. They are not available for free download. You may be able to buy the disks from someone.

If you're already running Lion, then you can at least create OS X Recovery on an external drive using the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant.

lhf
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