Problems installing Leopard

[itsallgood]

RAM was the problem

Just wanted to say a DIMM was the problem.

Of course it was the last combination that had the problem dimm. It may have been faster to reinstall tiger and do the mem-test than to just remove banks and restart. Oh well, thanks for the help.

 

[Ray W]

Leopard blight

I too have been blighted by the Leopard upgrade that doesn't quite take. I have tried several times to load Leopard on my G5 and each time come up with the dreaded BaseSystem validation error, in the end just settling for Tiger. But of course, it is not so easy, is it? Tiger started playing up, usually the most unMacOSX-like behaviour, system freeze. My research led me to the same conclusion as 99% of users, bad RAM. Unfortunately, in a G5 iMac it has to be the hardwired RAM that is the problem. Fortunately, though, I seem to have stumbled onto a solution, I had previously downloaded the Applejack utilities suite from SourceForge and decided to run the Memtest option just to have a look at it, and, guess what? Since running it, I have not had a freeze. It has been 4 days, when before I could expect at least one freeze per day. I don't know if it is long term yet or whether it will help others in their problems but it can't hurt to give it a go, it doesn't cost anything (except maybe a donation??) and it may save having someone take your money to do a RAM transplant that may not be necessary. Long live Mac.
PS. I haven't tried Leopard again yet, will stick with Tiger for a while.

 

[Ray W]

Convicts not pirates!!

I'm in Australia, hence the reason for receiving the disk ahead of most people (see Australia thread else where on the forum).

I'm new to this forum but it is good to see there are other 'convicts' out there doing the right thing, go the Aussie Mac users.

 

[mazarebacha]

where you can install leopard? for what is it? i think that is the one wild animal. isn't it?

 

[srabin1]

Install Problem - The Installer Could Not Verify the Contents of the 'BaseSystem'

If you are trying to install Leopard or earlier versions of OS X and it won't install and you get obtuse error messages or something like The Installer Could Not Verify the Contents of the BaseSystem package...CHECK YOUR RAM...it is very likely a bad memory module...this drove me crazy for a week, buying new hard drives, new versions of OS X, etc, until I finally discovered that is was a bad RAM module. It would be nice if they could give you more intuitive error messages...hear that APPLE????

 

[birdsong473]

Thanks!! re: the installer could not validate the contents of the basesystem package

Very grateful for this thread--we got this error on my husband's laptop; he had upgraded the RAM a year ago but didn't save the old sticks, so we just removed a memory stick...bingo, install worked. Much frustration ended.

 

[miltonbaker]

optical drive is another possible source of fault

I too appreciate the discussion in this thread, at least that which is on point. I encountered the same type situation and error messages etc as the original poster, in attempting to perform an upgrade to Leopard on my G4 mac mini (vintage Aug'05). I tried suggestions above in this thread, but the problem persisted. Both hard disk and RAM appeared okay. Then, when doing other business and before I got around to obtaining advice or a replacement DVD from the local Apple Store, I noticed that the internal DVD-reading optical drive in the Mac mini (shown by Disk Utility as "MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8124") had developed a fault in burning CD's, in that freshly made discs failed verification. Reasoning that the problem with Leopard might be due to using that unreliable drive for installation, I tried an external (LaCie) DVD/RW unit I had in reserve, and on the first try Leopard installed with no problem whatsoever. Thus the optical drive hardware may be another possible source of fault when installation fails due to issues with verification.