Installing OSX on my girlfriend's Mac using my disks

[adriantoll]

My girlfriend's PowerBook G4 is getting really glitchy - the thing that's particularly noticeable is that people keep disappearing from her address book, but there are also lots of other things like application crashes etc. Repairing permissions doesn't seem to have done anything, and a repair disk from my PowerBook with hers as a target firewire drive gives a failure notice.

I want to do a full backup, completely reinstall her system, then do a diskwarrior to mark any physical problems with the hard drive, then reload her software, addresses etc.

Thing is, we live in Scotland, and my girlfriend's OSX disks are in a box somewhere in storage in Canada. Can I use my OSX install DVD (I've got 10.3 and a Tiger upgrade DVD) to reinstall the OS on her PowerBook, or does it have to be her separate copy of OSX 10.4?

I think the answer is no, and that it would be fine to reinstall using my disks, but I just want to make sure before doing something so long and involved...

 

[janey]

it depends on what you have. if they came with a particular (non PowerBook) machine, then nope.

 

[jdechko]

Can I use my OSX install DVD (I've got 10.3 and a Tiger upgrade DVD) to reinstall the OS on her PowerBook, or does it have to be her separate copy of OSX 10.4?

This goes along with Janey's comment, but if the 10.4 disc is a retail disc, then you can just pop that into your gf's Powerbook and be on your way. You don't even have to install 10.3 to begin with. Apple doesn't do retail "upgrade" discs; there's only one version of the disc.

However, if your 10.3 & 10.4 "upgrade" came with a machine (like a refurb computer that didn't originally come with 10.4, or a computer that was purchased within a certain timeframe of Tiger's release) then, as Janey suggested, they're tied to the machine type that you have and (most likely) won't work.

 

[adriantoll]

Thanks for your replies. They're both PowerBook G4s, and the Tiger disk is a retail disk, so we're good to go