Leopard install nightmare

Question

Hello,
I've had a bit of a nightmare installing Leopard on a first generation base model MacBook. I put the DVD in and did a standard install (ie, not archive/erase and install). Everything seemed to go fine at first and the MacBook restarted after about an hour of installing. But the initial window that comes up (the one where you need to type in your password before you get access) wouldn't let me type in my password. The cursor was flashing, but typing on the keyboard did nothing. When I pressed login anyway, the window sort of 'shudders' but nothing else happens.
I restarted the computer a couple of times and now the screen goes white and a flashing question mark on a folder appears. Also, when I tried re-installing Leopard it appeared not to be able to see my hard drive. I googled these symptons and it seems that this might be related to a hard drive failure.
Any idea what I should do? Something tells me that this is not something I'm going to be able to fix by myself. I hope Apple will fix this for free, given that its their new operating system that has messed up my computer. Also, I didn't have a back-up of my hard drive.
After a long wait for Leopard, what a horrible disappointment. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Joelsome

Answer 1

As a Mac user since '88- I'll remind you of the precautions you should take (or should've taken) before installing a new operating system (especially a brand new release with no public testing).
First and foremost, everything should be backed up. All of your personal info needs to be somewhere else, whether on another HD or even a DVD. If you don't back it up and your system goes bad, then all of the files under that system are pretty much gone.
Secondly, you should have at least one other operating system or boot disk you can fall back to. If the new install doesn't take on your computer and you just wrote over or upgraded your original OS and you don't have the backup disk, then you are screwed.
Third (and this is optional but my recommendation), you should equip yourself with some different disk utilities, such as disk warrior, norton, techtool (what I use) or something...even a freeware utility like onyx or something that can just clean caches or temp files. The most important thing you can do as a user to allow your system to run smoothly and prevent problems from occuring is keeping the system clean- but many third party cleaning tools allow you to make a boot disk in case of a problem like you are explaining here.
All of this to say, did you do any of this? You can't expect every OS install to go totally smoothly, especially an upgrade. If you don't wipe your disk clean before an install, there is always a possibility that something existing on your disk or a periphreal could conflict with the new OS. This is why you should take precautions as mentioned above.
As far as your accusation against Leopard, you don't have much evidence and should check some other things first before coming to that conclusion. First, I would take the install disk and boot from it, then run disk utility (it's up in the menu somewhere) and try to repair your hard disk, and check the smart status of the drive. If it says "failing" then your HD is bad and probably already was bad...If you repair it and it repairs it successfully, then try the install again and see what happens. If that doesn't work, and all of the other suggestions didn't work, then you may as well erase the disk completely and install Leopard. Only then will you know whether the Leopard install really is causing problems. If you can use your install disk on a clean HD and it runs fine, then your HD or existing information on your HD is to blame, and also the lack of precautions taken to make sure these things don't happen.
Apple has taken "use friendly" to a new level...but that doesn't mean there are no strings attached. You can't expect everything to run flawless on a computer, since a lot of the way it runs is dependent on the user and what you do with it (continuous internet downloading, tons of failed installations and orphaned files, etc.).
I always look at a computer like a house...If you don't clean up after yourself, take care of it and make it look nice, or fix things when they break, then you risk other things getting broken or even the entire house being ruined. For example, you shouldn't leave your house while leaving the fireplace or oven on. You should have your furnace checked on every so often and you should make sure you don't overload any circuits with too much electricity, or your house could burn down. If you don't fix the roof when the shingles go bad, you could get water damage. It may sound like a lame analogy, but it helps me to keep my computer clean.
My computer is a G4 from 2000. 7 years old coming up on 8...it's been through 3 operating systems and updates within all of those, and I'm still running on the same HD. If you take care of your stuff, clean out your files and caches and don't download random things all of the time, and take the precautions I mentioned above, then your machine will last a long time and will run great.