Help! Husband cursing. Reinstall OSX on G5imac

[natness]

So, husband booted from OSX disc, wiped computer using disc utility, now it won't reinstall from the same disc. He says the error message is "Can't be installed on this computer." When I asked what disc he used, he says it was "the only one that let me start up from it." I believe it is disc one of the mac osX install disc version 1.0. He said the disc that was labeled for the G5 wouldn't let him boot up. He is ranting now about there being no difference between PC's and Apple. If you can, please tell me how to fix this, or at least how to get the disc out while it is the computer's startup disc. He's about ready to to hit the wall.

Update: Got the disc out and am now attempting to install from G5 OSX disc but getting the "this software cannot be installed on this computer" message. Why? It is the right disc! Argh!

 

[mkrishnan]

Mmmm, there are two kinds of OS X system discs.

- There are grey ones with white lettering that say something like System Restore DVD. These only install on the same line and revision of computer that the disc was made for / came with. That is, you can only use the ones that came with that same G5 or with another one essentially just like it.

- Retail discs, which are black with a big X on them. These can be installed on any compatible computer, meaning it has to meet the minimum specifications for that version of OS X and also it can't be a computer that shipped with a later version of OS X on it already (you can't downgrade).

So first you have to use the right discs. Now if you've done those two things rightly, then the other major possibility is that when you erased the hard drive, you reformatted it as something onto which OS X cannot be installed. The disc must be partitioned using the Apple or GPT scheme and the partition you install OS X onto should be the one that looks something like MacOS X, Extended, Journaled (HFS+).

 

[natness]

Thank you for answering. It appears that the G5 OSX disc is for a rev B G5, and the computer we are trying to reinstall on is a rev A. Could this then account for the problem? So similar and yet so different?

 

[mkrishnan]

Thank you for answering. It appears that the G5 OSX disc is for a rev B G5, and the computer we are trying to reinstall on is a rev A. Could this then account for the problem? So similar and yet so different?

Yeah, sorry, that won't work. The grey discs are really intended for the computer they came with. So if you're not able to use the discs from the rev A won't boot the rev A, then you should figure out why... as long as you're using the first disc from that set of system discs, it ought to work.