Computer hard drive crashed on our iMAC need help

Question

Hi we just put in a new hard drive because our hard drive died.
We cant remember how to reset the imac to stop it from booting to windows vista partition so that we could restore the mac os cd to the hard drive.
We cant remember teh four key combinations we have to hold down to reset the computer to boot up so that we could choose either the windows or the mac os hard drive.
But since we instaled a new hard drive the computer keeps seeking the old windows partition and wont give us the option of holding down the option key to choose which partitioin to boot.
Does anyone have experience in installing mac os on a new hard drive that already has linux boot loader in it?
our imac keeps booting up with the linux boot loader and we cant install the mac os back this way.
pleaes help urgent thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Well, you really can't. Linux has control of the drive. You need to first prep this drive as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Upon completion you can restore your backup of OS X to the drive. When you finally boot OS X on the drive, you can then use Boot Camp Assistant to create your Windows partition.
If you aren't doing things this way then you need to use the procedures you followed in the past for creating a triple-boot system.