How to start up from a dvd?

[albion-bh]

I rang apple support as I was having problems eg spotlight was a bit flakey and there was an alias in the bin that I could not get rid of.

I was advised to reinstall hed down the ctrl key with dvd in place . . ."that's it" the apple guy said "you'll need disc 2, bye!" and I was left alone!

It installed then restarted and asked for disc 2 . . .but the dialogue box was greyed out. I ejected disc 1 after a while and inserted disc 2. it ejected it . . .7 times. I rang apple . . . . closed till Monday!

I tried again and there was no destination disc . . . So to my question I want to start up from a dvd so I can recover some items before I WIPE and start again. But it just tries to istall?

Can't I start up from a dvd like the "cd" icon above "hd" icon?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Control key? You mean the option key? That's what is used to select a startup disk.

You can boot from a DVD just like from a hard drive, but I don't believe disk 2 is bootable. The installer boots from the first disk, installs, then reboots to the hard drive and copies the rest from disk 2.

It sounds like things are buggered up a bit. Try the install process again. If the same thing happens this time, do a custom install without iLife, which should require only the first disk. You can later install iLife after the fact.

 

[albion-bh]

Thanks. Yes I meant alt key. I kept trying and eventually it loaded! I have a Pb 2.4 Intel core 2 duo. It is now running 10.4.11! Where as before had 10.5.6. So now I can't retrieve my prev "stuff" I can't find the 10.5 disks!!!

Did the 2.4 come with 10.5 or did I buy it? I just wondered what I'm looking for! We have just moved!!! Am I looking for an Apple Leopard box or 2 grey disks?

 

[old-wiz]

If you bought Leopard separately it's a single disk with a big X on it. Original install is 2 grey disks.