Installation of OS X Lion hangs on MacBook Aluminum 1278 Core2Duo 2.4 GHz

[Brennaugh]

As stated, when trying to do a fresh installation of Mac OS X Lion for a client, the install process either hangs at 33 minutes remaining with a beachball (with a hard drive installed internally), or installs fairly regularly when the hard drive is mounted externally, but produces the "Mac OS X Installer could not download additional components" error.

(Naturally, I would do an upgrade installation if possible - I received the MacBook from the client with no hard drive at all, and a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500 GB drive was suggested as a replacement drive.)

I've noticed some other strange things about then notebook - particularly, when reading the install DVD for Lion (or for OS X Leopard), I have to wait a VERY long time for the boot screen after pressing Option at POST. I'm not sure if these things are related, but it's certainly made the effort of checking/formatting the HDD via disk utility very arduous (incidentally, the disk has been checked, verified, and formatted under a GUID partition table several times).

Any thoughts on what can be done to get this MacBook up and running again?

The most I know as far as specs are concerned is that it's a Late 2008, Aluminum Unibody Macbook 5,1 (A1278), with a 2.4 GHz Core2Duo Processor (as stated by my client).

 

[BrianBaughn]

Not sure about that installation problem. I've heard about some drives not working...for unknown reasons. Also, the DVD drive may be having problems. Starting from DVD can be painful, anyway. Have you tried restoring the installer image to a USB stick (8GB)?

Does that MacBook have the stock 2GB of RAM? Needs to be increased if so. Official minimum for Lion is only 2GB but performance can be pretty bad. Further to that...read this on maximizing the MB's RAM potential.

 

[Brennaugh]

Does that MacBook have the stock 2GB of RAM? Needs to be increased if so. Official minimum for Lion is only 2GB but performance can be pretty bad.

Tried upgrading to 4 GB with what I had around the shop - startup performance was a little faster, but I've been waiting at least twenty minutes now to get into the startup disk utilities (trying to restore to a usb stick, as well).

I'll keep you posted, Brian, thanks for the wisdom.

 

[Brennaugh]

It turns out that now, spontaneously, the Scorpio Black Drive we'd installed is returning a S.M.A.R.T. failure, but ONLY when connected via the internal SATA connector.

If I'm running it through an external dock connector, it plays just fine, but produces the "Cannot download additional components to install Mac OS X" error.

I think it's just trying to spite me.

 

[BrianBaughn]

External connectors or enclosures usually do not support S.M.A.R.T. standards therefore the status cannot be determined.

Don't fool around with that drive if it failed SMART. Swap it for a new one.