There's a great thread on the MacNN boards talking about removing OS X without erasing a hard drive. "Schmoo" (who may be an Apple employee; check the MacNN thread!) presented an AppleScript that can be used to easily remove all traces of OS X from a hard drive. So if you have a version installed that you'd like to remove, check out Schmoo's script in the Update soon and Applescript to Uninstall X thread.
[Editor's note: I've pasted Schmoo's AppleScript into the second part of the article; read the rest if you'd like to see it...]
If you've installed Mac OS X over Mac OS 9.1 on a drive and want to remove the Mac OS X items from the drive:
- reboot into Mac OS 9.1
- paste this script into a new script window in the script editor and save it as a classic applet. quit script editor.
- run this script
All Mac OS X items will be placed in the trash.
BEFORE YOU EMPTY THE TRASH, MAKE SURE THAT IT DOES NOT CONTAIN ITEMS YOU WANT TO KEEP!
property root_items : {"bin", "dev", "Network", "private", ¬
"sbin", "usr", "Volumes", ".DS_Store", ".hidden", "cores", ¬
"etc", "tmp", "var", "Applications", "Developer", ¬
"Library", "mach", "mach.sym", "mach_kernel", "System", ¬
".Trashes", "Users", ".vol"}
property systemfolder_items : {"Classic", "Classic Support", ¬
"Classic Support UI", "ProxyApp"}
tell application "Finder"
activate
try
set this_version to the version as string
if this_version does not start with "9" or ¬
this_version is not greater than or equal to "9.1" then ¬
error "This script requires a Mac OS 9.x system greater than 9.0.4."
display dialog "This script will move Mac OS X items from the startup disk to the trash." with icon 2
display dialog "Should this script delete the Users folder?" buttons {"Cancel", "Yes", "No"} default button 3
set the users_flag to the button returned of the result
repeat with i from 1 to the count of the root_items
set this_item to item i of the root_items
if this_item is not "Users" or ¬
the users_flag is "Yes" then
if exists (item this_item of the startup disk) then
delete item this_item of the startup disk
end if
end if
end repeat
repeat with i from 1 to the count of the systemfolder_items
set this_item to item i of the systemfolder_items
if exists (item this_item of the system folder) then
delete item this_item of the system folder
end if
end repeat
beep
display dialog "The Mac OS X items have been placed in the Trash."
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then
beep
display dialog error_message buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
end if
end try
end tell
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010531014607666