Yeah, so not my machine. I was contacted by someone to see if I either had information or could get it.

Basically, they said they let a friend borrow the machine, and when they got it back, everything was gone. They no longer have access to Safari, their webcam or their settings. They were going to try to just reinstall the OS, but Apple won't sell him a disc unless he can provide the serial number and it is no longer on the machine or something. (I don't have the machine on hand this second)

Basically, I'm wondering if anyone here who uses Apple computers (I know elfprince as the only user that does, there might be others, though) might be able to give me some ideas on what I could do or offer this person. Or if they have access to the OS install discs (are they free? I'm not sure on that) so I can just reinstall the OS.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

You could try opening the About This Mac window (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1559), but there seems to be a problem with certain models of the MacBook Pro.

A Google search may reveal other methods of retrieving the serial number. OS X itself is not free, it costs around $30 iirc (and I didn't know you needed a serial number to buy it).

You need a serial number to buy it because IIRC running OS X on a non-Apple device is against the end-user license agreement.

I don't own any Apple devices except for an iPod which doesn't even run Apple's OS anymore, but I wonder: if you have no way to retrieve the serial number of your Mac, can you take it to an Apple store so you can show proof you have a Apple device so you can buy the OS install disk (or so that can they can retrieve the serial number for you)?

That is actually what they told him to do with it, but it's an hour drive south of here for the nearest apple store that works on their computers. And he said the cost for them to mess with it was outrageous and he'd be better off buying a new laptop. (his words, not mine)

Did he take a file to the case or something? And even if he did, he should still be able to get the serial number in software. What happened to the installation media that came with his machine?

How old is the MacBook Pro? If it has OS X Lion, it has a recovery partition. Just mount that partition and address any problems.

I haven't needed to access mine yet, but you may be able to access it by rebooting at holding down Option, then selecting that partition. I did this when I dual-booted Windows on my laptop but haven't had any need to hold down option when rebooting my computer with 10.7.

If it came with Lion it has a recovery partition. If you installed Lion as an upgrade it may or may not depending on the decisions you made at installation time. I do not have a recovery partition since I'm already pushing the limit that I can support in a triple boot system (MBR based bootloaders are picky).

He said the machine is a 2010. I don't have any real specifics, and as you know I don't use Apple computer tech, so I don't really know the layout of how things are on those laptops. And the machine is not in my possession so I can't confirm whether something is somewhere or not. I can see if he'll let me have the machine to see if we can get somewhere with it.

If you get him to give it to you, ask him to give you anything that came with the machine (the white boxboard briefcase with CDs and pamphlets). Most diagnostics are pretty easy to do, and you can find help for a particular model of machine on the Apple website, or, quite frequently, on iFixit.