A real stumper—Leopard install blue screen & keyboard startup commands don't work!

[bdmcrory]

Hello all—I've got a stumper for you!

The story is this:

I've been wanting to get 10.5 for a while now but never had the cash to do so. But, a friend of mine got a family pack and was willing to let me have one of his installs. Since I was a long way away (me in uk, him in usa) he FTPed a disk image to me to install off of.

I installed by restoring the leopard disk image to my external hard drive and then selecting it as the startup disk. I did this and installed 10.5 perfectly. Then, on the restart, I experienced the dreaded blue screen.

Now, I can't boot from the install disk b/c I don't have an actual disk. I can't even boot from 10.4 disks because I left those in the USA.

Most solutions to this problem have involved using target disk mode or another startup command sequence. The trouble I am having is that my cpu (intel iMac with aluminum keyboard) isn't detecting startup commands. I have disconnected everything (plug replug, etc.) and now the only thing plugged into the iMac is the keyboard. Still getting blue screen on startup and still unable to use any keyboard commands on startup.

Now, has anyone been able to work through this combination of issues in the past? Are there any suggestions?

Also, I have heard that the official apple position is to wait on the blue screen for several hours and that will sort it. I am pursuing that option now as, well, nothing else has worked.

PLEEEEEEEEEASE help me!

 

[SaintDiablo]

Oh you're going to hell for this one! Nah just kidding. I'd advise you get a dual layer DVD and get Roxio Toast or any application similar to Toast and copy the image file to the disc with Toast, and you should be set.

 

[merl1n]

Most solutions to this problem have involved using target disk mode or another startup command sequence. The trouble I am having is that my cpu (intel iMac with aluminum keyboard) isn't detecting startup commands. I have disconnected everything (plug replug, etc.) and now the only thing plugged into the iMac is the keyboard. Still getting blue screen on startup and still unable to use any keyboard commands on startup.

Are you saying that as soon as you hear the bong, you can't use the keyboard, or are you saying that during the blue screen (after the initial grey screen) your keyboard becomes non functional?

If it is the latter, try booting in "Safe Boot" mode.

You do this by powering up and immediately hold down the shift key. Keep holding until you see the spinning gear on the grey screen and then let go.

This boot takes much longer than a normal boot since it is deleting some hardware cache files and running a fsck (file system check and repair) on your disk. It could take up to 15 minutes, but eventually you should see a login window with "Safe Boot" in red letters. Then login, run Disk Utility and repair permissions on your disk.