Doing a complete hard drive reformat on iMac.

[Sir Tony]

Hi,

My computer locked up while trying to complete a hard drive partition with Boot Camp. Ever since then my system has been hanging a lot. I think I need to completely reformat my hard drive. I did an archive reformat which didn't help. I have the original Tiger install DVDs and my Leopard upgrade DVD. I want to keep iLife '08 also. What is the proper way to go by this?

Thank you!

 

[Unspeaked]

Do you only have iLife on the Tiger DVD that came with the machine?

Normally, you'd boot off the Leopard DVD and do a clean install, erasing the destination drive (there's a check box for this).

If you don't have iLife on a separate disc and need to install it via the Tiger disc, I'm not sure if there's a way to install just it and not the OS, so you may need to do a very backwards install of Tiger (with iLife) first, and then upgrade that install to Leopard using the other disc.

It would be a lot easier if you had iLife on its own disc, but it's hard to tell from your post.

 

[kfordham281]

I think there is a way to install iLife that is part of a Tiger disk (system restore DVD only). Pop the disk in and read though some of the menus or folders. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe it's there somewhere.

 

[EMU1337]

You can install iLife only by putting the Tiger disk in and then selecting something to the effect of "Install Additional Software Only." I forgot the exact wording, but yes there is a way to only install software on your backup cd and not the entire OS. Hope this helps.

 

[Sir Tony]

I do not have a seperate disk for iLife, only the Tiger install disk. So I will boot off the Leopard upgrade DVD, do a clean install, then use the Tiger DVD to install just iLife? Where is iLife found, disk 1 or 2?

Thank you!

 

[Unspeaked]

I do not have a seperate disk for iLife, only the Tiger install disk. So I will boot off the Leopard upgrade DVD, do a clean install, then use the Tiger DVD to install just iLife? Where is iLife found, disk 1 or 2?

Thank you!

It doesn't matter where it's actually found, if the poster above is correct, you'll need to boot off disc 1 regardless (to get to the install menu) and then it will prompt you to insert disc 2 if needed.

 

[EMU1337]

Yeah, its located on the 2nd disc but you have to put in the first one to start the install.

 

[Sir Tony]

So I boot with the Leopard upgrade DVD, do a clean install. Then boot off the Tiger DVD and install iLife, correct? What else will be missing besides iLife when I do a clean install?

Thank you!

 

[tersono]

you don't need to boot off the tiger DVD to install iLife. Just insert it while running leopard and go for the 'optional install', which will allow you to install iLife without over-writing your operating system.