My imac intel won't install the installation cds correctly.

Question

I have the white imac intel computer and I tried to reinstall the installation cds that came with the mac because my computer for whatever reason started going slower and slower. The thing is when I tried to reinstall the cds, the first cd did not install correctly. For some reason the first cd counted down the time from 64 hours, it took two days and when it was finished I got a black screen and a lot of error messages. Something about the DNS server, the airport driver isn't installed, and something about the local?. Everytime I try to install the first cd it want start up and it tells me to install the second cd and when I try to install the second cd it won't install. The blue line only goes so far and then it just hangs there and I get more error messages. Is there a way to reinstall the first cd to correct the problems without the computer telling me to take the first cd out and insert the second cd? Or is there something I can do to fix my imac so it will work again?

Answer 1

Hi Evie, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Power down the iMac with #1 Install disk in the drive.
Bott up while holding the d key down at boot-up and run the extended Apple HW Test first.
If we still can't boot from the Install disk, Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
Where are we now?
We have some serious corruption on the HD, so we're going to try to get it to boot off the #1 disk to fox that.
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, 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. (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. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
Then Safe Boot off the HD & use Disk Utility from there to Repair Permissions, reboot once more.
Safe Boot... holding Shift key down at bootup.