Help with i-mac

[megamuel]

My girlfriend decided to buy an i-mac from a carboot sale....why, I don't know. It was only £12 I guess. Anyway, when she turns it on it comes up with a gray screen with a folder in the middle. There is a question mark in the folder which flashes to a smiley face. So, there you go. Is it dead? Does anyone know how to fix it? Does it need the re-master disks? If so, what operating system does it work on? Any help would be much appreciated as she is going away to university soon and needs a personal computer to do her work on. Thank you.
Sam.

[Buzz]

It simply need the Operating System disks. The blinking question mark indicates that it has OS9.2 or earlier installed but can not find a valid System folder to boot from. You can install anything From OS9 to OS10.4 on the iMac. Since it's new to you I assume there's no need to retain any data on the hard drive. The best bet would be to install whatever system you want and choose to erase the hard drive during the installation processes.

[megamuel]

Ah, thank you very much. Which operating system would you advise to install on it then? I think I can get a few versions off my brother. Will the latest version it can accept be the best? Is it difficult to install the OS from the state the computer is in?

[Buzz]

Well since I don't know specifically what iMac it is it's hard to say what will run best. I'd choose either OS9.2.2, 10.3.9, or 10.4.2 and I'd over look everything in between. Which you choose depends on what iMac model it is, what you want to do with the Mac, how much RAM it has and how much hard drive space it has.

Any version of the OS is pretty easy to install. Just turn the Mac on insert the CD then restart the Mac and hold down the C key on the keyboard until you see the desktop/installer screen. You can generally restart the Mac by holding it's power button down for a few seconds.

[30111987]

just a side note, the first series of imacs ran mac os 8

if it has only 64mb ram i'd suggest installing v9 rather than 10