IBook G4 stuck installing Leopard

This is my my first post.
I am trying to install Leopard on my wife's iBook G4 and it keeps getting stuck on Welcome page after I choose the language. It will not let me get out of this and the wheel keeps spinning and I can hear the disk running. It says, "In order upgrade to Mac OS X v 10.5, you must have Mac OS X v10.4 or later already installed on your computer. Searching for Mac OSX on the computer..."
I thought I was running the latest version of Tiger. Is there any way to get out of this screen? Can I get back to Tiger? How do I do a hard reset here? Sorry for all of the questions and thanks for any help.

Thanks everyone for their replies. I had to take the iBook into the Genius bar to get the Leopard disk removed. They were able to get the disk out and get me back to Tiger. They informed me that the 256 RAM was not enough and that I could easily upgrade up to 1 GB. I went to RamSeeker.com and ordered a 1 GB card for pretty cheap. I try Leopard again after I install the RAM upgrade.

Similar Messages

Should I install Leopard on my iBook G4?

I have read some of other people's experiences in these Apple discussions but want pose the question again with the specs of my own computer. I have an iBook G4, purchased in early 2005, running 10.4.11, with a 1.33 GHz processor and 1.25 GB of RAM (I just upgraded from 768 MB of RAM). I am liking Leopard on my new iMac and would like to upgrade to Leopard on the iBook, especially since I could then use Time Machine to back it up easily to an external hard drive. Should I take this step? How much free space on my 80 GB hard drive should I have in order to make this move? (I now have only 11.75 GB, which I know is not enough, as Leopard takes 9 GB, but I use the iBook for work and could conceivably take off some personal items such as music and photos. By the way, I purchased the iBook myself for work, so I am not breaking any work rules to have personal stuff on the computer.)

Thanks to all of you who gave me the confidence to install Leopard on my iBook G4. I did it very methodically. First, I purchased 1GB of RAM, which, when installed, gave me the maximum of 1.25GB of RAM. Then I pared down my music and photo libraries so that I had a much bigger chunk of free space on the 80GB hard drive. Then I installed Leopard. First I waited for the DVD to be verified (a longish process), but then the installation went very smoothly. All in all, it took under 2 hours. I realize I won't have some of the graphic animations in Dashboard, but I think the advantage of having Time Machine will outweigh that. Thanks again, folks, for your advice.

Have reformatted my Imac using original discs (installed leopard (10.5)) tried to do the software update but it cant download the itunes update and when it gets to the configure update screen after restart for main update, it just gets stuck. HELP!

have reformatted my Imac using original discs (installed leopard (10.5)) tried to do the software update but it cant download the itunes update and when it gets to the configure update screen after restart for main update, it just gets stuck. HELP!
The configure bar gets about an 1/8 full and then just does nothing. I think its lists the update as combo update? cant remember with out checking.
I have tried to do the disk verify and repair but this has made no difference.
Please let me know what i need to do, I have reformatted the mac just to start over as was clogged with a lot of useless data, I had installed lion (10.7) from the app store previously and now cant seem to find a way to re install lion. I hope I dont need to pay for it again?

If you erased your hard drive, you'll need to reinstll OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to access the App store. You won't have to pay for OS X 10.7 Lion again. Did you try booting to the recovery partition by holding the command and r keys down? If that's still there, you can reinstall OS X 10.7 from there.
If you're looking to install the current iTunes, you need OS X 10.6.8 at a minimum.
If you're still trying to update OS X 10.5 Leopard, you can download the combo update from here. Download, use Disk Utility to repair permissions, apply the update, then repair permissions again. That will take you to OS X 10.5.8.

Easiest way: installing leopard on ibook

hi,
i got a ibook g4 (1.33ghz,1.25gb,cd-r/w) from a friend and im looking for the easiest way to upgrade the os to leopard. i found several ways in the inet, but none of them sounds quite easy or cheap (e.g. runninga tftp server, changing the internal cd drive with a superdrive,...). so ive the leopard dvd next to my ibook and couldnt install it...
is it possible to use an external dvd-drive connected via firewire to install leopard? i already tried an external drive with usb, but i the ibook sadly wont boot from usb devices.
thanks for help!

Hey iBookChris,
is it possible to use an external dvd-drive connected via firewire to install leopard?
Yes that's the way I do it to avoid any variance in internal drives.
Richard

Installing Leopard on an iBook with a CD-ROM only

How can I install Leopard on my iBook that only has a CD-ROM? Can I request Leopard on CDs, or can I use an external USB DVD-ROM drive?

James Orlowski wrote:
How can I install Leopard on my iBook that only has a CD-ROM?
Can I request Leopard on CDs,
no.
or can I use an external USB DVD-ROM drive?
you can if your ibook is intel. if it's PPC then you need a firewire DVD drive not USB. also, if you have another Mac, you can boot your in target mode, connect it to the second computer and install leopard from there. The second mac has to have the same architecture as yours (both intel or both PPC).

Help - tried to install leopard over tiger on iBook G4 and cannot boot up

My ibook G4 apparently does not have enough disk space to enable me to install leopard; shame, BUT in process of finding this out I cannot restart in Tiger - machine spends 3-4 mins trying then powers down to black screen.
Any help/advice gratefully received...
Thanks, Bob

Hi Bob, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Do you have a Backup?
Do you have a bootable external drive?
Do you have another Mac around so you could use FW Target Mode to clear some space...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
If none of the above, then using your Install Disk to Erase everything and start over completely is about the only ting left.
Due to temporary files, RAM Discs, VM, you need twice what they say minimum to install... 20 GB free.

Unable To Install Leopard to ibook G4

I'm currently using mac os 10.3.9 and I would like to install the new leopard using firewire. After i restart the mac it shows a dialog box stating that i could not install the leopard. Why?
My ibook specs:
G4 933Mhz
600+ RAM
No DVD Rom but installing from my friend's mac book via firewire

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
A MacBook can't be used to install Leopard on a G4/933 unless your MacBook predates Leopard, and you follow these directions exactly with the Leopard retail installer disc which looks like *:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1418365&tstart=10
MacBook installer discs labeled as such can't be used on a G4/933.
MacBooks newer than Leopard's release date of 10/26/2007 can't use the retail installer for Leopard unless it was revised since that date, and is newer than the MacBook in question.
- * Links to images hosted on my website may give me compensation.

Errors installing Leopard on iBook G4 (Late 2004)

I apologize for the long post but it seems like a good idea to provided some good background:
My friends iBook started freaking out a couple of months ago (e.g. kernel errors and all the fonts on the desktop icons/menu were "AAAAAAAA"). I helped him run Disk Utilities. I installed and ran Applejack and this "seemed" to help, but the drive still had errors that neither could repair. Last week, it started to persistently crashing and producing kernel errors. I took his iBook home to see if I could help. It stopped booting and Disk Utility could not repair the errors, so I wiped the drive and repartitioned and the drive still had several errors. I assumed that the drive was bad.
I replace the HD and installed a 250 GB, WD Scorpio Blue PATA, Model WD2500BEVERTL. Oh, the iBook is a G4, 1.33GHZ and 256 MB Main Ram plus 512 MB of RAM added. I followed the instructions from iFixIt <http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/iBook-G4-14-Inch-933-MHz-1-33-GHz-Hard-Driv e-Replacement/189/1> and faqintosh <http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ibook/g4hd/>. Both sites were almost correct. After I removed and replaced the HD, put everything together I had to remove the firmware password, which required a couple of RAM removals and Command-Option-P-R resets. I performed a few commands from terminal to verify that the firmware password was gone. See <http://www.fif3.com/howto/archives/001983.html>.
I installed the Leopard disk, setup the new disk using the Disk Utilities on the Leopard disk and proceeded with this installation. It failed to install. I played around with this and that and made several attempt to perform the installation via the optical drive in the iBook. It did not work. I started to read the installation log and tried to figure out what the problem was and found a few errors and tried to find a solution online. I was suspicious that the optical drive was acting up <http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10470660&#10470660> , <http://www.hackint0sh.org/f147/68876.htm> so I investigated how to install Leopard using Target mode. Simple, right, connect the iMac to the iBook, restart the iMac in Target mode so the iBook can share the opticle drive in the iMac, unless.... Leopard cannot see a drive via Target mode if the "Target" is running Snow Leopard. grrrrr!
Well, I found lots of talk about imaging the Leopard installation disk to an external firewire HD, and performing the Leopard installing using the "option" start and select the external firewire drive. I found some great instruction <http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329117-263.html> that walk me through the steps required to make an image of the Leopard disk and then restore the file to an external drive. An hour and a half later, I had the image restored to a 500 GB USB/Firewire external HD with one partition Apple Partition Map and connected it via the firewire to the ibook... Ran the installation again and the same errors occurred. I tried again, freeze. Tried again same errors.
Well, I had a crazy idea, install Leopard on the External Drive. This time the errors occurred at the same points; however, it was verbose and if I am reading it correctly the information that the installer is looking for on the Leopard disk that is missing or corrupt. The interesting thing with this is "Bad" Leopard disk came up several times during my searches. I have use my Leopard disk once on the iMac (now running Snow Leopard), why would I suspect the installation disk? Right? Well, the error that displayed on the last attempt pointed to the installation disk missing information and to contact the vendor.
Yesterday, I obtained another retail copy of Leopard from a coworker and the same errors occurred. I tried again, it froze. I tried a disk image to the external drive using the new disk which resulting in the same errors.
I don't really think there is a hardware issue (e.g. RAM) but who knows at this point. All I can really say is that my friends iBook is still dead. Actually, worse that when I got it. At least before it would boot Tiger... sometimes. Does anyone have any recommendations? Or a source for a retail copy of Tiger?

It is obvious the this is the wrong forum OR no one is interested in installing Leopard on an iBook G4. Regardless, I continued to investigate and found many posts related to bad or suspect RAM. So, I purchased a 512MB stick of Crucial RAM PC 2700 from a local PC and Apple repair shop. I would have purchased a 1GB stick, but this was not available.
I reset the RAM via Command-Option-P-R upon restart, ran the Leopard installation. This time it was successful. Everything was working great and then I had to install the updates... Note: I Should have made an image of the installation on the HD and Time Machine back up... but I didn't. This was a bad call because the 10.5.8 combo update didn't finish and crashed during install... then it provided an error message that it could not be installed, restart.
Subsequent attempts to reinstall Leopard via the DVD/CD drive have failed. I ran Disk Utility and the HD volume now had errors. I tried to repair these with Applejack & TechTool Deluxe. It could not repair... so I gave up.
Upon my returning to a challenge, I used Disk Utility to erase and setup one partition on the HD. I ran Leopard install. It failed. Ran Disk Utility again, erased the HD this time with zeros (just for fun) and the installation is hanging. I am going to let it sit over night. Any ideas out there?

Stuck on White screen and pinwheel after installing Leopard

Tried to install Leopard last night, everything appeared to go fine. But this morning when I woke up the screen was stuck on a white screen with apple in the middle and the grey wheel below it (yes it is moving) so I think the cd just wont finish running. Problem is can not get the disc to eject or the computer to do anything. Have tried everything I could fine on website including turning off and unplugging for 30 minutes but when turn back on still get the same screen. Help, Im new to Mac and very frustrated. Thanks

When you turn on the computer, hold down the mouse button. The disk should eject.
Did you notice if the disk passed the selfcheck.
Leaving an optical drive running actively overnight is not a good idea.
During any install, it is always best to babysit it. That way you can quickly spot anything unusual and take care of it immediately. You can also see the progress and read any information screen that pops up.
After you remove the DVD, the system may still not boot for other reasons, but if you have problems, restart it and hold down the shift key to enter the safe mode and see if it boots.

Stuck in Leopard install

So I seem to be permanently stuck in the very first two steps when installing leopard. I get a little message saying that mac os 10 (something)can not be found on your computer and so I can eject the instal cd and I cant do anything to get around it. Any ideas?

Someone please help me!

Need help installing Leopard. Stuck with Gray Screen with looping circle!!!

I currently have Mac OS X 10.2.1 installed in my G4. Never upgrade since i got it. I purchased Leopard and tried to install it.
After I put the DVD in and clicked Install it restarted my computer. Then it started the installation process. 10 minutes later it stopped and said installation failed. Disk is dirty. I finally got the DVD and and tried again but all i got was the gray screen with the looping circle.
I tried re-installing 10.2.1 then try Leopard again. After asking me to restart my computer nothing happen. No installation process. Just a gray screen with the looping circle for over 10 hours. (left it over night)
What should I do? Can this be fixed? How can I install Leopard??????
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get out your Jaguar installer disc and boot from it. After the installer loads and you select your language the menu bar should appear. Select Disk Utility from the File menu. After DU loads select your hard drive from the list on the left then click on the First Aid tab. Click on the Repair Disk button. Wait until the repair process is completed. If any errors are reported that have been fixed, re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported and the disk is pronounced OK. If DU is unable to repair the drive, then you will need something like Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro to repair the drive. Once your drive is properly prepared boot from the Leopard installer DVD. When you get to the point of selecting the destination drive click once on your hard drive then click the Options button. Select the Archive and Install option. Do not select the option to preserve the user folder and network preferences as these may be damaged. Click on the OK button and complete the installation. Be sure to use the same username and password that you use now for the admin account.
Your hard drive will not be erased and your old system will be saved in a Previous System Folder located at the root directory of your hard drive. You should then be able to transfer your personal data from the PSF to the newly installed system.
BTW, repairing permissions will not fix your problem.

IBook 1.42 14": Leopard or Tiger?

Hi, I have just bought a 14" iBook with 60g hdd, 1g ram, and a Superdrive. It comes with Tiger but I'm considering upgrading it to Leopard. The reason for considering the upgrade is so it can talk and interact with the 3 other Leopard powered Macs in the house. By talk and interact I mean share files, screen share, printers etc.
I'm just not sure if this model of iBook really grunt to run Leopard without performance being impaired. It will not be used for processor intensive mainly email, web and some Office functions.
What is the general opinion on this?

I upgraded my Powerbook to Leopard and went back to Tiger because of performance issues and software compatibility issues. However, after upgrading a few of my friend's Macs I've realized that the installations themselves can be the trouble. I installed Leopard on my friend's iBook 133Ghz (upgrade install) and it ran terribly slow. I then did an erase and install, which was better, but still a tad buggy. So, I erased the drive and did a complete install on the blank drive and it has no issues. It runs as it should. If you do install Leopard I'd suggest erasing the drive and doing a clean install on a blank drive.
Personally, I'm staying with Tiger.

Install Leopard on an External Drive on a Snow Leopard Mac Book Pro

Hi
I have a MBP 17/CTO 2.66GHz i7, which came installed with Snow Leopard.
I've used boot camp to install Windows 7.
I've attempted to install Leopard 10.5.4 on an external drive.
The steps I've taken:
1 - Connected my WD Passport on the Firewire Port
2 - Partitioned the drive. The first partition is 100GB, Mac OS/X Extended (journal) and I've selected the GUID Partition Scheme
3 - Inserted the Mac OS/X Leopard DVD, and followed the instructions to restart
4 - On restart I have three options. Mac OS, Windows and Install Mac OS\X
5 - I select Install Mac OS\X.
6 - The disc spins for a few moments and then the laptop freezes
Beware of the following issue:
1 - On restart more often than not, the DISC will spin and then the laptop will freeze.
2 - To overcome this, restarting pressing the ALT (option) Key.
3 - You should see your boot options. If you do not see "Install Mac OS\X", then eject and reinsert the disc.
The question maybe why would I want to have an Leopard Installation when I have Snow Leopard. The software I develop has thrown up a number of differences between Leopard and Snow Leopard, hence I need both OS's to support my software.
I mentioned this to the Apple Store before I purchased my machine. They put me through to a senior technician at Apple Care, who told me it would be possible to have the set up I am after; and to contact Apple Care if I ran into any difficulties.
After I received my laptop and ran into the problems I described above I contacted Apple Care, only to be told by a senior technician that it should be possible to install Leopard on an external drive, but Apple Care cannot provide any support or assistance.
I really do like the laptop and would much rather not return the laptop; but I really do need the setup described.
Anyway I have tried a number of different approaches:
1 - Having no partitions (so just the single partition)
2 - Trying all three Partition Schemes:
- GUILD Partition Table
- Apple Partition Map
- Master Boot Record
All resulting in the same problem.
I can confirm the external drive does appear as bootable in disc info.
My guess is one of the following is preventing the install:
1 - It is simply not possible to install an earlier version of Mac OS\X than 10.6 on the laptop I have, even if I tried to install on an external drive. This restriction is built into some hardware confirguration. So even if I wiped the internal hard drive or added a new partition to the internal hard drive, I would not be able to install 10.5.4. I say this may be a reason as the second technician told me the CPU has built into it a process which prevents installing older versions of Mac OS/X, but that it should NOT restrict installation on an external harddrive.
2 - When trying to install Mac OS/X, a search is carried out for an external drive which has the correct format. For some reason it may be that this search is not finding my external drive?
I'm a little stuck here and quite disapointed that the support promised by Apple Care for assistance in setting this up, is now not forth coming.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, as ideally I would prefer to keep and not return the laptop, it's a beautiful piece of machinery.
Cheers
Parmy

The mystery continues...
I have an older MBP (2.33 GHz Intel Core Duo) which came installed with Tiger. I can confirm I purchased a genuine copy of Leopard (10.5.4) from the Apple Store and it’s not an OEM version. I installed 10.5.4 without a hitch on my old MBP internal drive. It is the only OS installed on my old MBP.
Using my older MBP (which through software updates is now running 10.5.7), I managed to install 10.5.4 onto my external HD (WD My Passport Studio – 640GB FireWire 800).
However; on the final restart, the screen remained grey and 10.5.4 did not boot from the external drive.
I restarted the machine holding down the ALT (option) key, and only two options appeared, Macintosh HD and the Install DVD. I selected the Macintosh HD and opened System Preferences.
In System Preferences --> Startup Disk, I discovered the partition on my external HD which contains 10.5.4. I selected this partition and selected restart.
On restart my MBP displayed a grey screen, and the blue light on my hard drive flashed slowly. I left this for an hour, however; the OS did not start and the screen remained grey.
I then plugged my external HD into my new MBP which I started holding down the ALT key.
To my surprise I found 3 boot options (Macintosh HD, Windows and Leopard). Leopard being the partition on my external drive, which now has 10.5.4 installed.
I selected Leopard, but sadly after 30 minutes, the OS failed to boot.
Although this deviates slightly from this post, I fail to understand the problem here:
1 – Why can’t I boot 10.5.4 on an external drive, from my old MBP? Surely this is not because my old MBP is now running 10.5.7?
2 – Why can I see 10.5.4 as a boot option on my new MBP but not on my old MBP when I start the MBP holding down the ALT key?
I doubt there is a problem with my external drive, as it seems to read, write, etc... in all normal cases.
Whilst it definitely appears that I won’t be able to boot 10.5.4 on an external drive from my new MBP, I should be able to at least boot it from my old MBP, which would give me the option of installing Snow Leopard and Windows on the internal drive of my old MBP.
Apologies for keeping this post going, but I hope by getting to the bottom of this, it will help other Mac users as well.
I’ve run out of ideas of things to try, so I will give Apple Care another call in the morning, and will report back.
Any suggestions of other things I can try?
Cheers

Cannot Install Leopard on my Macbook

Hi,
I recently bought a macbook off ebay due to my ibook dying and not being good enough to run leopard anyway (67MHz off!), eventually got it and I can't install leopard on it! This makes no sense to me as its a core 2 duo 2ghz 2gb ram, definately high enough spec! I put the Leopard Disc in (it's not the retail one but it says "For Mac Computers") and it boots to it, gets to the first screen asking to choose the language, so I pick English...then it has a think...then it says "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer". What's that about? I can install ubuntu on it easily, I can even put XP on it easily but it won't have leopard! Anyone got any ideas?

When you buy a Mac from an "official" reseller, it always comes with the system software on a DVD that will only work on that model of computer.
You appear to have a DVD designed to be used on a model of computer other than the MacBook you bought.
The retail version would work. I think you'll have to buy it.
However I do think that the person who sold you the MacBook should have included the system software disks with it.

Problem with syncing after installing Leopard 10.5.8

I have a PowerBook G4. I just installed Leopard 10.5.8. Ran all the available updates and so far there are a few bugs that I can't fix. I need some help please.
1. When syncing to mobileMe, the computer gets caught in a loop and the round arrows at the top right of the screen never stops spinning. Also, when you bring the pointer to the top of the page, it seems frozen and the wheel starts. The time has also frozen.
2. When syncing to iTunes with my iPhone, it also gets stuck in that sync loop.
I'm assuming that there is something going on with MobileMe or with syncing. I can't find anything on this. Can anyone shed some light.

Hi Eric,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at the top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for action in Safe Mode...
Reboot, test again.
If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed. Also look in System Preferences' Other row.
Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...
/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons

IBook G4 stuck installing Leopard

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