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Intel Mac Mini won't install Snow Leopard

jkelly888

jkelly888

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 29, 2005
184
0
pluto
Hi, last year, i bought a Mac Mini on ebay and it came with snow leopard already installed. Its been working great but today, i decided I want to swap the 80gb drive for the old 320gb drive from my laptop (the laptop got a shiny new SSD). Problem is, when i try to boot from the 10.6.2 install disc, it says that snow leopard cannot be installed on this Mac. Any way i can get it to install Snow Leopard on the new drive?
Also, I tried running the installer on the old HDD from inside the old Snow leopard install and it also said that it could not install snow leopard. It then asked me to restart and kept attempting to install Snow leopard and failing.

specs of Mac mini:
-Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
-Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz
-1Gb 667MHz DDR2 RAM
-4 USB ports

for the record, i think the guy i bought it from bought a new mac mini and just included the discs that came with the new one in the one he sold me. The instruction manual shows a mac mini with a mini display port. The only OSX disc i got from him was the snow leopard one.
also, if it matters, this mac mini is the only mac computer that I own.
 
C

chrismacguy

macrumors 68000
Feb 13, 2009
1,979
2
United Kingdom
jkelly888 said:
Hi, last year, i bought a Mac Mini on ebay and it came with snow leopard already installed. Its been working great but today, i decided I want to swap the 80gb drive for the old 320gb drive from my laptop (the laptop got a shiny new SSD). Problem is, when i try to boot from the 10.6.2 install disc, it says that snow leopard cannot be installed on this Mac. Any way i can get it to install Snow Leopard on the new drive?
Also, I tried running the installer on the old HDD from inside the old Snow leopard install and it also said that it could not install snow leopard. It then asked me to restart and kept attempting to install Snow leopard and failing.

specs of Mac mini:
-Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
-Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz
-1Gb 667MHz DDR2 RAM
-4 USB ports

for the record, i think the guy i bought it from bought a new mac mini and just included the discs that came with the new one in the one he sold me. The instruction manual shows a mac mini with a mini display port. The only OSX disc i got from him was the snow leopard one.
also, if it matters, this mac mini is the only mac computer that I own.
Click to expand...

Is it a grey disk, or a white one with the Snow Leopard on it? - If its a grey one you need to purchase a white "OS X Snow Leopard" DVD at retail, if its a white one then something strange is going on...
 
jkelly888

jkelly888

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 29, 2005
184
0
pluto
chrismacguy said:
Is it a grey disk, or a white one with the Snow Leopard on it? - If its a grey one you need to purchase a white "OS X Snow Leopard" DVD at retail, if its a white one then something strange is going on...
Click to expand...

It's a gray disc. Would a normal retail disc work or do i have to get the machine specific discs from apple?

edit: if I bought this, can i use it for a fresh install or just an upgrade? {Link}
 
Ivan P

Ivan P

macrumors 68030
Jan 17, 2008
2,692
4
Home
Stan Mikulenka said:
Hi jkelly,
there was NOT a Snow L. when this Mini came out...
Click to expand...

This is what the issue seems to be. You said you're trying to use gray install discs, which are the ones bundled with new Macs and are machine specific (meaning they will only work for the particular model Mac that they were originally bundled with). As Snow Leopard was not released until after your Mac was produced, obviously there are no gray install discs with Snow Leopard that are compatible with your computer, meaning you must buy one of the white retail SL discs to be able to install the system.
 
0007776

0007776

Suspended
Jul 11, 2006
6,473
8,170
Somewhere
jkelly888 said:
for the record, i think the guy i bought it from bought a new mac mini and just included the discs that came with the new one in the one he sold me.
Click to expand...

That is your problem, the disks that come with a computer will not work on any other model of computer, so you will have to buy a retail version of Snow Leopard.
 
jkelly888

jkelly888

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 29, 2005
184
0
pluto
Ok, thanks for the replies. I guess i'll have to buy a retail SL disk. At least they're not stupidly expensive like Win7 is....
 
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