G5 upgraded to Leopard - failed - installed Tiger on EHD - what next?

Question

When my G5 iMac failed, the repairers put in a new power supply and a new HD. But they had no Tiger instal disks and I didn't think to supply mine. So they gave me Leopard instead (but no disks). Since then I have seen faults develop, mostly at login :
1. sometimes not getting past the spinning gear wheel (switch off, on, usually ok)
2. trying to log-out of login account - logs back into login account, no login screen (Restart usually fixed this)
3. having got past that, once - in admin account - 'Save' didn't function in any app (Restart fixed that)
4. on another occasion, 'Copy' wouldn't work in any app (Restart fixed)
Once these login problems had been fixed (they didn't happen every day), the Mac would function fine for the rest of the day - no problems.
Today - I tried to login, it got as far as the 'spinning gear' and then made a loud fan noise. Switching off, on, trying again, didn't work : I got the same thing every time.
So, I installed Tiger from my disks, onto an external drive. This seems to have worked fine. With the Tiger OS installed there, I can make the Mac run from the eHD, and went through the whole Welcome / Start-up routine. This included setting up a main account, which I gave the same name, same short name, and same password as on the Mac itself.
This has given me access to my main account's files on the Mac's own HD - I can see everything there (is this because I used the same name and password?), but not the contents of other accounts on my Mac's HD (the usual red 'no access' symbol).
At this point I have decided to halt. Email on the Mac uses Mail 3 (for Leopard) so I dare not try to access it using Mail 2 (Tiger) from the eHD. iLife on the Tiger install disks / eHD is earlier than the iLife 06 I have been running, so I am not going to run those either in case I mess anything up. I am running Safari on a Windows netbook. I am not going to risk iTunes.
Now that I am running Tiger from my eHD, but not daring to do much except access my documents, (I can get some email, and use Safari on the Windows netbook) - what should my next move be? Obviously the hardware of the Mac seems to be ok - the HD shows up and everything on it seems fine as far as I can see. It just won't boot Leopard any more.
In the longer term, I suppose the repairers need to reinstall Tiger for me and migrate all my data across? I will miss Quicklook, but at least I will get Photoshop back (PS7 won't run in Leopard).
In the meantime, what should I do on a day-to-day basis? Keep running Tiger from the eHD? How do I get it to launch that way once I've switched everything off?

Answer 1

Hi
+" . . . but not the contents of other accounts on my Mac's HD (the usual red 'no access' symbol)"+
You should be able to get around this by simply selecting the internal drive and selecting Get Info from the Finder Menu. At the bottom of the resulting window you should be able to select the "Ignore Permissions on this drive" option. Failing that you could enable root (use NetInfo Utility to do this) and log in as root. You then have access to everything. Copy off what you want to the external drive.
From what you've described it does sound like the internal drive is having a problem? Have you tried to repair it yet using Disk Utility? Once you've backed up everything you could try reformatting the drive and cloning back the working 10.4 OS from your external drive. You can use what's already built in or CarbonCopyCloner:
http://www.bombich.com/
Alternatively you could try repairing the drive using something like this:
http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
+"How do I get it to launch that way once I've switched everything off?"+
Select the drive you wish to boot from using the Startup Disk Preferences Pane. Alternatively when switching on your computer again hold down the alt key and select the relevant drive.
Tony