My Leopard Install Disaster

I finally got Leopard for my Intel iMac. I’ve never had a major install issue, so I didn’t expect one with Leopard. Just in case, I did a full back up to my external hard drive. Good thing I did.

The install started out like normal, and I selected an archive and install. I let the machine go and came back a while later expecting Leopard waiting for me when I came back. Instead I got an error message that one of the packages could not be verified (or something to that effect). This cancelled the installation.

Not only did it cancel my installation, but it wiped my hard drive! I could not boot from the hard drive anymore. I booted to my external, ran disc utility and formatted the internal hard drive. I booted from the Leopard DVD and tried to install again. This time a different package could not be verified, and I had to start fresh again.

This happened several more times, and I was going crazy. I decided to look up the issue at Apple’s Discussion boards. According to a post I found, third party RAM seems to cause this issue. I should remove my third party RAM and try installing with Apple RAM installed.

This would be great except I didn’t feel like taking apart the computer and swapping my RAM for Apple RAM (which I didn’t hav eanymore anyway!). I don’t know if this post was true, but I decided to try another method.

I took my Macbook from work, booted the DVD in the Macbook, connected the iMac via firewire, and booted the iMac in target mode (booting with the T key held). I was then able to choose the iMac as the destination drive. So far so good.

A little while later and the install was done. Success! Leopard booted and I was able to migrate my user account, apps, photos, music, etc over from the backup to the new install during the Leopard setup process.

What a mess! Luckily, I know enough to look for help on the web (or contact the MyMac staff, which was going to be the next step), and to have the knowledge and the Macbook to install via target mode. I want to know what is the person without the knowledge and resources to do this going to do? Third party ram, or not, I wonder how many people have wiped their computers clean with the same error and DID NOT have a hard drive.

Moral of the story: BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. IF YOU DON”T HAVE AN EXTERNAL DRIVE FOR BACKING UP- GET ONE! AT THE VERY LEAST BACKUP DATA TO DVD or CD-ROM DISCS.

Leave you Leopard install successes or failures below.