Cannot upgrade from 10.6.8 to Mavericks

Question

I am running a MacBook Pro 5,3 with 750gb HD and 8gbRAM. I had previously upgraded to Mavericks so I know it works on this machine. I was having hard drive problems with my old 320 and had it upgraded to the new WD 750, and had my ram upgraded while I was at it. I only had 10.6.3 on disk, so thats what was installed on the machine. I had issues with my network connection when doing the online upgrade to 10.6.8, and the file corrupted a couple times and kept failing at 80%. At this point I had performed a reinstal of 10.6.3 and then re-upgraded back to 10.6.8, but now when I try to upgrade to Mavericks it says it cannot be installed on this computer.
I'm wondering if A) This is related to the new hard drive. Is it possible the hard drive is not compatible for some reason?
B) The previous upgrade to 10.6.8 is corrupted and is affecting my upgrade.
How do I solve this issue? I have backed up my computer to a fresh ext disk, and am willing to erase my internal drive, install 10.6.3 again and perform the upgrades from there if need be.

Answer 1

These instructions are for OS X 10.7 or later. I don't have a 10.6 system to test, so the procedure may be slightly different.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Select
/var/log ▹ install.log
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
The contents of the log will appear on the right. Each log message begins with a timestamp. Select the messages from the time of the last installation or update attempt. If you're not sure when that was, click the Clear Display button in the toolbar of the Console window and then try the installation again. Select the new messages that appear.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. You may need to use a text editor with search and replace, such as TextEdit.