G4 iMac won't start from Leopard CD

[Mac Questions]

It's a 17 inch 1GHz G4 iMac. I just wiped the hard drive with the DBAN CD so I could do a completely fresh install. I've run the hardware test and everything is working fine. My Leopard DVD is in good condition and not scratched. I have previously used my Leopard DVD on this computer to upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5.

Problem: I can't boot from the Leopard DVD. It just spins around for a few moments and then get ejected. I've tried holding down C on boot, holding down option (it doesn't detect the DVD), and holding down nothing on boot up.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[elppa]

If you have a USB/Firewire Hard Disk that you could try imaging the CD to a partition and seeing if it will boot.

It could be a problem with the CD drive, rather than your disc.

 

[Mac Questions]

If you have a USB/Firewire Hard Disk that you could try imaging the CD to a partition and seeing if it will boot.

Not a half bad idea. I'll give it a go.

It could be a problem with the CD drive, rather than your disc.

Drive is definitely working fine.

 

[Mac Questions]

If you have a USB/Firewire Hard Disk that you could try imaging the CD to a partition and seeing if it will boot.

OK, tried that. Imaged the DVD onto a USB hard drive and booted from it. Everything went fine at first, I had to use Disk Utility to format the internal hard drive. As soon as formatting finished, I got a kernel panic.

Next boot, I was told "unable to install Mac OS X because there is no software to install". This despite the installer telling me that installation would require 9.5GB.

Third boot I tried with also the Leopard DVD in the drive. It wasn't picked up as bootable in Startup Disk. Startup Disk on an Intel Mac running 10.5 picked it up as bootable fine.

 

[tonyburkhart]

After the kernel panic, did you try a hardware check?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

 

[BittenApple]

Reset your PRAM.

 

[Mac Questions]

After the kernel panic, did you try a hardware check?

Yes, I ran the extended test twice and it said everything was fine. About a week ago I also ran Tech Tool Pro, which said everything was fine.

Reset your PRAM.

Just tried that a few times. Still getting kernel panics, still can't boot from the 10.5 DVD.

I may end up starting the iMac in Firewire Target Mode and installing 10.5 to it from another Mac.

 

[Mac Questions]

OK, I use an Intel Mac to install 10.5 to a USB drive partitiond with GUID. I then formatted the target Mac's hard drive as Apple Partition Map from Firewire Target Mode. I cloned the USB drive to the destination drive with SuperDuper!

First boot worked fine. Booted up, typed in the login password, but the computer hung (everything totally froze and became unresponsive) before the menu bar was loaded. Next boot, the computer logged in automatically but hung as I was clearing icons out of the Dock. The next two boots the computer hung in the middle of booting.

I've tried fsck -fy in single user mode, but that showed no problems and did not fix anything. I reset PRAM and booted, got to the Desktop, but after about 30 seconds it started to beachball, and then hung.

 

[Mac Questions]

Booted in safe mode, no help. Still freezes. Managed to get in long enough to check the console messages and system log. Nothing out of the ordinary there.