Leopard Upgrade Issue (Fixes Don't Work)

Question

Hello all,
I have a 1Ghz Powerbook G4, and have never had OS upgrade problems before. I finally decided to upgrade to Leopard and am sharing in the Blue Screen o' Death fun that so many have experienced.
I have read through the many posts on this. I have done the APE removal stuff, repaired permissions and hard drive, and rebooted while standing on my head -- but I always come back to the BSoD.
There isn't enough room on my HD to do an Archive & Install, because I was going to dump a bunch of old files on DVD-R after I upgraded. I DID do a complete clone of my HD before I upgraded, so most everything is there but:
1) I did some logo/vector work this morning and was stupid to not at least ZIP it all up and email it to myself. I would really like to get this folder back out of my documents if at all possible.
2) Although I have a clone I have never had problems, so I have no idea how to use it. Do I restart holding down C, and use the DVD menu to restore the hard drive?
- If I do that will it be just like it was when I last backed it up?
- If I go this route, can someone tell me if I can possibly get that folder out of my documents first?
- Is there a better way for me to approach this?
Thank you all in advance for your help!
Jason

Answer 1

Is there a better way? Yes, but unfortunately you didn't do it the first time around which is why you are now having problems. So here's what you need to do:
1. Boot from your Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from theUtilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives.
4. Select the startup volume (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will may take several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Finish the OS X installation.
8. After the computer restarts you will be in the Setup Assistant. Be sure to create the new admin account using the save shortname and password as you are using now. The shortname is the name that appears under your Home folder.
9. You can then use Software Update to update the system software. After you complete the updating process I suggest opening Disk Utility and repairing permissions.
Once you have Leopard running you can begin the process of reinstalling your third-party applications and copying your personal files from your backup clone.
I strongly recommend that before reinstalling any third-party software that you obtain versions that are compatible with Leopard. I also suggest that you repair permissions after installing any third-party software that uses an installer (as opposed to drag and drop installing.)
From time to time perform some maintenance to keep the computer running properly:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.0 is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.6.1 is Leopard compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. The current version, 1.5.1, is Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that presently AppleJack is not compatible with Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.