Snow Leopard Out of box experience

The very first time an apple computer is turned on, you are presented with a impressive “out of box experience”. Apple wants to dial up the wow factor, by playing a video that flies the words “Welcome” in a dozen different languages across the screen. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend you watch the embeded video further down this page.

I am selling my black macbook, and want to give the next owner this same experience. When I worked for Totally Awesome Computers, we used Microsoft’s System Prep Tool to “Reseal” an XP installation. That made it so that software could be installed, but the customer would get the “first time booted experience”. On a windows computer this is easily done using the System Prep tool. Snow leopard has no such program, but can easily be done with a few simple commands.
Step 1: Boot to “Single User mode”

Hold Command and S keys on boot. you will come to a screen like this.

Step 2: Enable Changes

Type in then press enter:
mount -uw /

Step 3:Reset the Setup Assistant

Type in then press enter:

rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Step 4: Remove user account

Type in then press enter:

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist

Step 5: Show Installed Users

Note the short name (username) of the user account(s). They must be deleted.
ls /Users

Step 6: Delete Users

This step can not be undone, be sure that there is no important files in each user directory.

Type in then press enter:
dscl . -delete /Users/<username>

Repeat for each user

Step 7: Delete User Folder

Type in then press enter
rm -rf /Users/<username>

Repeat for each user account

Step 8: Finally Restart the computer

shutdown -h now

All done, the customer will see the video then be asked the initial setup questions.

Thanks to http://jamesce.com/ for sharing these instructions.