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HELP!!!Snow Leopard Upgrade (with goal of Lion)

C

chrisahx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 9, 2011
4
0
Atlanta, GA
Let me start out saying that I just bought a NEW MBA yesterday due to the fact my MBA from late 2009 was stolen. I have been at my mom's since the holidays and want to upgrade her desktop iMac (intel 5.2) which is running Tiger 10.4.11. I also bought her a new iPhone 4S so its quite necessary that I at least upgrade her to Snow Leopard (then Lion) so Icloud sync will work and itunes will work with her new iphone.

Problem is Apple doesn't sell the upgrade disk anymore and online every place I see wants around $200 for a used single userdvd, and with as much money as I've paid Apple over the past 3 months on 3 new iphones, 2 ipads and 2 MBA's seems crazy when my goal on the iMac is Lion. I do own some Install and Recovery DVD's that came with prior purchases, I have: one Snow Leopard CPU Drop-in DVD (10.6), one snowy OSX 10.6 on a "Software Reinstall Drive" (usb disk that came w/ MBA) I also have from an old MBP two GREY & white CD's 1 & 2 Mac OS X Install DVD's (OS 10.5.5) Leopard.

Any Advise on how I can get either Leopard or Snow Leopard installed on this imac? (Once I get that done, I'll just buy Lion from the Mac App Store) I;ve followed the instructions on installing Snow Leopard straight from Tiger WITHOUT SUCCESS because I think this CPU Drop-in DVD might be causing a problem??? PLEASE HELP.....................
 
chrisahx said:
Any Advise on how I can get either Leopard or Snow Leopard installed on this imac? (Once I get that done, I'll just buy Lion from the Mac App Store) I;ve followed the instructions on installing Snow Leopard straight from Tiger WITHOUT SUCCESS because I think this CPU Drop-in DVD might be causing a problem??? PLEASE HELP.....................
Click to expand...

You will need to use a Legal retail version of the OS (you can just get Snow Leopard). You cannot use grey restore discs from other models - Grey restore discs are model specific.

There are lots of places that sell Snow Leopard
 
pdjudd said:
You will need to use a Legal retail version of the OS (you can just get Snow Leopard). You cannot use grey restore discs from other models - Grey restore discs are model specific.

There are lots of places that sell Snow Leopard
Click to expand...

The GREY disks I have with Leopard 10.5, are from the MB Pro I used to own and I've heard the grey disks ARE as you say, model specific, BUT I also have a single Snow Leopard disk thats NOT grey, it has a pic of a snow leopard on it and says: CPU DROP IN CD I've seen mixed replies regarding this "CPU" drop in Disk, with some forums saying you CAN use it with a clean install, others saying no so I'm at a loss as to what I am to do. I ALSO have a Mac OSX v 10.6 Macbook Air software Reinstall drive that came with the NEW MBA I got yesterday which came with a free upgrade to LION. Can I use either the Snow Leopard CPU Drop in disk, OR the Snow Leopard Software reinstall drive to install Snow Leopard on this intel iMac? (I still also have the Original 10.4 install disks that came with the Imac so I always have those I can fall back on if all else fails)
 
NO help on this forum i it seems

What a waste of time it's been to ask for help on this forum! 10 hours after my request for help and only one useless un-helpful reply received! I guess my options for my intel iMac are to keep the outdated Tiger (and useless OS for itunes syncing w/ iPhone 4S) Mac OSX 10.4.11 or shell out the inflated asking price of $200 bucks for a used retail 1 user copy of OSX 10.5 leopard! Thanks a LOT!
 
a snow leopard disc that has a label "CPU DROP IN CD"????

I'm not sure about that. Might be model or CPU specific as well?

Not the snow leopard disc that you buy from retail store, which cost about 30 bucks.
 
chrisahx said:
What a waste of time it's been to ask for help on this forum! 10 hours after my request for help and only one useless un-helpful reply received! I guess my options for my intel iMac are to keep the outdated Tiger (and useless OS for itunes syncing w/ iPhone 4S) Mac OSX 10.4.11 or shell out the inflated asking price of $200 bucks for a used retail 1 user copy of OSX 10.5 leopard! Thanks a LOT!
Click to expand...

Patience. Sometimes you need to wait for a reply.

If you followed the link pdjudd posted you will find that Apple is still selling the Snow Leopard at $29.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A

Now all you need to do is a clean install by first formatting the disk and then install Snow Leopard. (PS make sure that the disk is set to have a GUID table not an MBR)

Here are the detailed steps
http://macs.about.com/od/snowleopardmacosx106/qt/cleaninstall_sl.htm

From then onwards you can download and install Lion.

P.S. I have not tried the steps above with Tiger as I did not have Tiger but I followed the steps above to upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard. However from my reasoning it should work as in the first step your are going to remove the old OS thus when you are installing Snow Leopard Tiger would not come in the way.
 
Last edited:
Just asking how much RAM does the iMac have?

Snow Leopard needs a minimum of 1GB to work and Lion needs 2GB. So if you are running with less you need to upgrade the RAM prior installing Snow Leopard and Lion.
 
chrisahx said:
What a waste of time it's been to ask for help on this forum! 10 hours after my request for help and only one useless un-helpful reply received! I guess my options for my intel iMac are to keep the outdated Tiger (and useless OS for itunes syncing w/ iPhone 4S) Mac OSX 10.4.11 or shell out the inflated asking price of $200 bucks for a used retail 1 user copy of OSX 10.5 leopard! Thanks a LOT!
Click to expand...

8pm to 3am is not ten hours.
If you would have cared to look at the link you got provided, you would have seen, that you can buy Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for 29 USD. If you would have searched more (this question gets asked a lot), you would have seen, that getting the 29 USD 10.6 Upgrade DVD is a fully working Retail version of Mac OS X and does not require a prior Mac OS X version and that you don't need to shell out for the Mac Box Set.

And if you keep such an attitude towards people who might want to help you, you will not get far, though in this case you got me and maybe others riled up for your behaviour and unwillingness to wait or even do your own research and rather be spoonfed.


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Buy SL

you know you can buy snow leop for less than £30 from the retail website, or call apple care and they can help you with it. would have been a lot quicker to call and ask. instead of waiting for replays. the guys here are nice enough to post you reply so if your going to complain then then your obi just another wanker wasting everyone else's time. excuse my french!
the issue is going to be with your RAM. check your specs and make sure you can use 10.6 with you mba.
 
chrisahx said:
What a waste of time it's been to ask for help on this forum! 10 hours after my request for help and only one useless un-helpful reply received! I guess my options for my intel iMac are to keep the outdated Tiger (and useless OS for itunes syncing w/ iPhone 4S) Mac OSX 10.4.11 or shell out the inflated asking price of $200 bucks for a used retail 1 user copy of OSX 10.5 leopard! Thanks a LOT!
Click to expand...

Great way to annoy people who are trying to help you.
 
pdjudd said:
Heck, it's not even business hours. That's a lot for volunteer unpaid work
Click to expand...
No, this is a message board, where people are posting 24 hours a day.
If one registers here, one has the right to accept answers within five minutes, if an answer takes more than 161 minutes, that answer is not even valid, especially if correct.

I guess, there are a lot of posters, who just like to be fed with answers, they expect. A frakking frak, as Debra would say, if she would cruise the twelve colonies.
 
You can also skip Leopard and SL altogether and go straight to Lion if you wish. Plenty of instructions on the net on how to do this.
 
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