System crashed - cannot boot install media to reinstall

Question

Hi all,
Yesterday I came into work to find my Intel Mac Pro Xeon 8 core workstation sitting there with a spinning beach ball... so I waited for a while and finally had to force a shutdown via power-off. The system refused to boot at all after this. After fighting with it for several hours, I booted it into target disc mode and backed up my files from another mac and then erased the hard drive on the Mac Pro via Disk Utility.
I now want to reinstall OS X Leopard onto the Mac Pro but it will not boot an install DVD (I have several from Mac Pro's and even from a new Mac Mini) - I hold down C when I turn it on and it still does not boot the media. I also tried holding down Option (alt) and it sees the install DVD, I select it and then nothing happens, it just shows the spinning gear. This is a new machine, only about 6 months old. The hard drive is completely erased so there shouldnt be anything on it that would be messing it up.
Any ideas or tricks I can try? Thanks for reading!
Joe J

Answer 1

You cannot install Leopard on the MacPro using the install disk that came with the Mac Mini, you can only install with the disk that came with that particular computer or a retail version of Leopard.
Another possibility is the install disk has some scratch or even dust or some foreign substance on it that is preventing installation. Wipe it off and check for scratches.
I find it strange that it will recognize the install disk using the option key at startup, but not the C key. You might want to try resetting the PRAM. If you’re not sure how to do that, you can search this forum or post back.