Snow Leopard Install and the Grey Spinning Wheel

Question

So, I purchased Snow Leopard (says it's 10.6.3) this afternoon, and after the very long install process, got stuck with the grey screen with the apple and the spinning wheel, and nothing further will happen. I read on a few other posts that doing the install again eventually fixed the problem, but I have tried 3 times now and nothing is working. I know this is a problem lots of people have had, but I haven't been able to identify the solution for it, and Apple is closed for the holidays. Any help would be appreciated.
BTW, I had been running Tiger, and I have a 13.3 inch Mac Book.

Answer 1

Do you have your original Tiger installation discs? If so then you can reinstall it if anything goes wrong. At this point you cannot clone the system since it no longer functions correctly, so it's best to simply backup your data so it isn't lost.
Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive
Ejecting the stuck disc can usually be done in one of the following ways:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the left mouse button until the disc ejects.
2. Press the Eject button on your keyboard.
3. Click on the Eject button in the menubar.
4. Press COMMAND-E.
5. If none of the above work try this:
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:
/usr/bin/drutil eject.
If this fails then try this:
Boot the computer into single-user mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.
I would suggest the following procedure for erasing the drive before installing Snow Leopard:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility Utilities 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. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (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 can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Complete the OS X installation.