Leopard install hangs up

Question

Around 3pm today, I inserted the Leopard OS X 10.5 disc and double-clicked "Install Mac OS X". In the following window I clicked "Restart" and now my computer has "hung up" with the colored spinning wheel and has not restarted. It's now been seven hours.
One possible issue is that the computer goes to sleep during this process. Will that stop the restart from proceeding? Is there a way for me to change the Energy Saver settings now that it has reached this point? If I simply shut down and restart my computer is there any danger that I might lose information or corrupt my hard drive (80GB internal). Also, I have a 500GB external FireWire drive connected to the computer. Should I remove the FireWire connection before proceeding with the Leopard installation?

Answer 1

If you never got to the DVD self-check stage, which occurs first, then nothing should have changed and your system should still be Tiger.
The system should have immediately proceeded with the 10 minute DVD self-check.
See if you can eject the DVD with the keyboard. If not turn it off and restart it and hold down the left mouse button or the touchpad bar.
Check the DVD very carefully for scratches or that thin oily film found on some disks. If it has that file, clean it with a damp soft cloth, wiping radially center out. Do not wipe in a circular motion!
You should then be able to boot into the safe mode by holding down the shift key. After the system boots, restart it back to normal. Since you got to the first part of the install already, simply reinsert the DVD and shut off the computer.
Restart holding down the "C" key and you should boot into the DVD from which you can continue the install.
Be sure that you have done the normal preparations first: use the Tiger DU to check/repair the HD and file permissions. Do this before rebooting the system if you have not already done so. These two operations are very important for a smooth install.