sounds like bad HD or HD cable (if unibody). Is it shutting down when booted to DVD? if you have another SATA hard drive lying around try reformatting/installing SL to that (eliminate if it's HD or not). if it's shutting down even when booted to DVD it's most likely logic board.
No longer having problem with shutting down. That's what it did at the beginning, but booting with option command and R P reflashed PRAM and/or NVRAM so it got back the chime and I was then able to get a little farther...now it booted from the Startup DVD. The next problem was to install the OS - after I got the data I needed saved elsewhere....now, I don't discount possibility FD is bad, but I do have an extra SATA lying around...that's been reformatted for booting with HFS...Disk Utility verifies and finds no errors (the old drive gave errors and DU said it was unable to repair it - that I should save my data and reformat it)...OK, so now, even verififed, I get the error message. I just went out and bought a brand new Seagate and I will try to install the system in that one. The one I had lying around only had 60 Gig, so I wondered if the OS requires more room than that!? I keep hearing everybody referring to the logic board - what the "H" is that in PC terms? Would that be the circuit board on the HD? On a PC if that goes bad you will hear clicking. No strange sounds at all. Besides, as I said, I connected it to my PC and was able to read and recover the data with RTT's R-Studio, which recovers Mac data as well as Linux, FAT, NTFS, etc.
Went through whole routine again with brand new drive...nothing wrong with it...formatted, partitioned, verified...still no install
Went through whole routine again with brand new drive...nothing wrong with it...formatted, partitioned, verified...still no install
So, can I boot from some DVD utility that tests the system motherboard? I can do that with a PC. We should be able to isolate the problem...I really doubt that the mobo has gone wrong...the utilities system info is extensive and says POST passed...it recognizes the SATA device tree and my new drive without displaying any errors.
Installer log:
localhost OSInstaller [141]: Installation checks failed.
localhost OSInstaller [141]: Installation checks failures:
localhost Unknown[80]: time & date stamp System Profiler [148:903] Error loading /system/Library/SystemProfiler/SPFirewallRfeporter.spreporter: Error domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3587 UserInfo="memlocation" "The bundle "SPFirewallReporter" couldn't be loaded because it is damaged or missing necessary resources." (dlopen_preflight(/System/Library/SystemProfiler/SPFirewallReporter.spreporter/Contents/MacOS/SPFfirewallReporter): Library not loaded: /System/Library/Frameworks/ServiceMmanagement.framework/Versions/A/ServiceManagement
and so on
ending with
Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=642 UserInfo="mem location" "You can't save the file "Autosave Information" because the volume "Mac OS X Install DVD" is read only."
What the "H" is that all about?