My wifes 3-year old Macbook has become generally glitchy and we want to reinstall the OS to see if that fixes the problems. Its running Tiger. We bought Snow Leopard so we could upgrade. Problem is the internal DVD drive no longer works. We bought an external DVD drive (USB), but so far no luck installing the software. We get an error when trying to install from the external that, according to Apple support, means we have to partition the hard drive first. Well, we cant partition the hard drive because we cant access Disk Utility from startup, as it wont recognize the installation disk in the non-functioning internal DVD drive at startup. When accessing Disk Utility through Finder, the Partition button is grayed out. It must be accessed through the installation CD at startup. The drive is backed up, so were OK with just erasing the hard drive. But that is grayed out as well.
What I need to do is find a way to partition and/or erase the hard drive without using Disk Utility OR find a way to make the computer use the external DVD drive as the default so when we hold down the C key at startup it will allow us to use Disk Utility on the installation disk. Any other ideas? Thank you!
What I need to do is find a way to partition and/or erase the hard drive without using Disk Utility OR find a way to make the computer use the external DVD drive as the default so when we hold down the C key at startup it will allow us to use Disk Utility on the installation disk. Any other ideas? Thank you!
