Installing Snow leopard on older macbook pro

[Macbrainwracked]

Hello everyone. I was gifted a Macbook pro late 2006 core 2 duo, 2.16ghz that was supposedly non working, turns out it had a bad stick of ram. So I took the 1gb out and got it to boot right up into disk utility. they had previously had lion on it, but with only one stick of ram I opted to install snow leopard. I have created a boot usb flash drive. But I cannot figure out how to do a fresh install. Looking at the Hard drive it says there is 120.19gb, 119gb available. I have got to the point where I can launch into the SL installer, but when I get to the screen to choose what partition or drive to install on. It says there is not enough space on hard disk, I know there is, it says 83mb at least free, 6.16 used(snow leopard). So I know there is something I did wrong.

Any ideas on this?

 

[Hellhammer]

Launch Disk Utility while in the installer (it's hidden somewhere in Menu Bar) and erase the hard drive.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

Launch Disk Utility while in the installer (it's hidden somewhere in Menu Bar) and erase the hard drive.

Thank you for the reply! I will give it a try and see what happens.
[doublepost=1467476037][/doublepost]Now because I am using a usb stick, do I restore the USB stick to the HD?

 

[Macbrainwracked]

This is what I am looking at, It will not let me delete the drive at all. Where it is getting the 83mb from I don't know. Im confused on this.

 

[Hellhammer]

Can you delete the Mac OS X Install DVD partition in the HDD? After that you should be able to create a new partition that spans across the whole drive.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

I can erase it, but it keeps it as a 32gb partition. So You have the hdd partition and the 120gb fujitsu partition which is at 80 or so gb. I've tried partitioning the fujitsu into 1 partition but it says "partition failed with error, unable to unmount disk".
I created a bootable usb with Transmac, But when I plug it into the mac and hit option while booting the usb is not recognized. If I go into disk utility and restore with the mac HD in the destination and the USB dmg dvd in the source, I can get the pc to boot into the installer. But then I have the no space issue.

 

[curmudgeonette]

It looks like you somehow cloned the install DVD onto the internal drive!

Click on the line that says Fujitsu, and then click the Erase tab. Erasing the hard drive will let you create the correct partition(s) - actually, it should default to the correct arrangement. You can also set the hard drive name at this step - to either the default Macintosh HD, or to a name of you choosing.

Make sure you're booting from the USB stick. If you somehow cloned the stick onto the hard drive, you might have booted from that image instead. If so, the system won't let you destroy the boot volume.
[doublepost=1467497629][/doublepost]

I created a bootable usb with Transmac, But when I plug it into the mac and hit option while booting the usb is not recognized. If I go into disk utility and restore with the mac HD in the destination and the USB dmg dvd in the source, I can get the pc to boot into the installer. But then I have the no space issue.

I should have read to the end! I see now how you cloned the installer onto the HD. Once again, for the install to work, you need to boot/run the installer from the USB stick. Perhaps you need to recreate the USB.

I've now installed Snow Leopard on several machines from a USB stick. I created the stick by copying from a real SL DVD via Disk Utility.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

Thanks for the reply Curm,
it will not let me erase the futjitsu. It keeps giving me an error of how it could not unmount the drive(im assuming because it is the only drive). I can't get the mac to recognize the bootable usb stick. I don't know why. I have re created it several times, the only way I could get the mac to recognize it was by cloning it onto the hard drive like you said. I'm not sure if it is the usb or the mac :?

 

[Macbrainwracked]

 

[curmudgeonette]

It looks like you're booting into the Lion recovery partition on the HDD. (See your first photo.) This explains why you can't erase nor partition the HDD.

How did you create the USB stick? It sounds like you don't have a real DVD of SL, or your optical drive isn't working.

In Disk Utility, select your USB stick (or is it now an external drive called Mac OS X Base System). Do a Get Info. I'm curious what's on that drive.

What key(s) are you using to try to get the system to boot from the USB?

 

[DeltaMac]

Just to expand on curmudgeonette's question:
If you insert your USB installer, then restart while holding your Option key, does the usb installer appear on that Option-boot screen?
It's possible (I think) to make the USB stick bootable with Windows (I have read about that, but it never works for me, either!), but the best way to do that is to Restore an original Snow Leopard installer DVD, using Disk Utility, restoring to an 8GB flash drive.
Another choice is to create a partition on an external hard drive, and restore the SL installer to that partition. A simple copy from an .iso or .dmg won't do it. You have to use a good process for that, and Disk Utility is one that will work, and will leave the new drive or partition bootable to the installer.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

I used transmac to create the boot drive using a copy of the Snow leopard disk. I do not have the actual physical disk(this being my first mac of any kind). Is there a different program I would be able to create a boot USB with?

I'm actually not sure what the Mac OS X base system is, it has been there from the start.

As for the Keys, I restart the mac and hold the option key. When I cloned the usb drive to the hard drive? It would allow me to boot into the installer. But just having the usb flash drive plugged in, it does not pick it up during restart. All it show is the HD recovery icon.

USB drive


OSX file

[doublepost=1467509415][/doublepost]

Just to expand on curmudgeonette's question:
If you insert your USB installer, then restart while holding your Option key, does the usb installer appear on that Option-boot screen?
It's possible (I think) to make the USB stick bootable with Windows (I have read about that, but it never works for me, either!), but the best way to do that is to Restore an original Snow Leopard installer DVD, using Disk Utility, restoring to an 8GB flash drive.
Another choice is to create a partition on an external hard drive, and restore the SL installer to that partition. A simple copy from an .iso or .dmg won't do it. You have to use a good process for that, and Disk Utility is one that will work, and will leave the new drive or partition bootable to the installer.

Thanks for the reply Delta. So Are you saying I cannot use a copy of the .DMG at all? Or rather it would be best to use an external hdd to restore the installer of the .DMG file to?

 

[DeltaMac]

The Mac OS X Base System that you see is the normally-hidden partition on your hard drive that holds the Recovery system for Lion.
It means that your hard drive is not fully erased.
You can also boot to that recovery system, by holding Command-R as you restart, and that is the menu screen that you see in your post #9, first picture. THAT is the recovery system. You can install Lion directly from there, assuming that the partition will accept that install. You have to make sure you are connected to the internet, as the install downloads all the Lion system files directly over your internet connection. Best connection will be a wired/Ethernet connection. If you don't have a wired option, then you have to click the wifi icon near the top right corner of your screen to choose your wireless network, including your password for that network. It will take about an hour for the download, plus more for the install itself, assuming your wireless network is a reasonable speed.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

The Mac OS X Base System that you see is the normally-hidden partition on your hard drive that holds the Recovery system for Lion.
It means that your hard drive is not fully erased.
You can also boot to that recovery system, by holding Command-R as you restart, and that is the menu screen that you see in your post #9, first picture. THAT is the recovery system. You can install Lion directly from there, assuming that the partition will accept that install. You have to make sure you are connected to the internet, as the install downloads all the Lion system files directly over your internet connection. Best connection will be a wired/Ethernet connection. If you don't have a wired option, then you have to click the wifi icon near the top right corner of your screen to choose your wireless network, including your password for that network. It will take about an hour for the download, plus more for the install itself, assuming your wireless network is a reasonable speed.

Is there a way to fully erase the HDD? I originally was going to install lion like you suggested over the internet, but the stick of ram that was bad leaves me at 1gb, lion requires 2gb. If I can install snow leopard I can get the machine up and running, if not I will wait and get a second stick of ram and reinstall lion.

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, you can fully erase the HDD by booting to another device, such as your bootable USB installer.
(and you are already challenged by what you have now - )

I did forget about your initial comments about memory
Your MBPro will take 2GB sticks, so if you can get extra RAM, make it a single 2GB stick to add to your existing 1GB. That (3GB) is the maximum that your 2006 Core2Duo will support, and will give you an advantage, no matter if you stay with Snow Leopard, or decide you want to go to Lion.
There also may be a small advantage if you install a pair of 2GB sticks. Your MBPro will only address 3GB, but the pair of 2GB can give a slight speed advantage. It could be measurable, but probably not noticeable to you in the real world.

You may find out that the partition limitation that you have now might be simply a nearly 10-year-old hard drive that is just not working as it should. Easy enough to replace with new, and be done with any age issues that you might have from the existing hard drive. And, you COULD replace that spinning hard drive with an SSD, and get an actual noticeable performance boost.

 

[Macbrainwracked]

Yes, you can fully erase the HDD by booting to another device, such as your bootable USB installer.
(and you are already challenged by what you have now - )

I did forget about your initial comments about memory
Your MBPro will take 2GB sticks, so if you can get extra RAM, make it a single 2GB stick to add to your existing 1GB. That (3GB) is the maximum that your 2006 Core2Duo will support, and will give you an advantage, no matter if you stay with Snow Leopard, or decide you want to go to Lion.
There also may be a small advantage if you install a pair of 2GB sticks. Your MBPro will only address 3GB, but the pair of 2GB can give a slight speed advantage. It could be measurable, but probably not noticeable to you in the real world.

You may find out that the partition limitation that you have now might be simply a nearly 10-year-old hard drive that is just not working as it should. Easy enough to replace with new, and be done with any age issues that you might have from the existing hard drive. And, you COULD replace that spinning hard drive with an SSD, and get an actual noticeable performance boost.

Thanks for the info Delta!
I feel like such a mac noob idiot lol. I found a post somewhere of a guy who did some experimenting with different usb drives, and booting externally. He found that certain drives would work and certain ones would not. So (which I should have done from the start), I grabbed my backup flash drive and created a boot DMG, the same way. Plugged it in and restarted with the option key held down. It popped up the recovery symbol and the install drive symbol. Upon going through installation when it came time to choose the HDD, the main drive showed up. So I went into disk utilities and partitioned it.....and it worked! it partitioned to a single drive, and Snow leopard is now installing
I will definitely get an extra 1-2gb when I am able to, and I already have an SSD drive picked out to go with it. For three days I racked my brain on this, I should have tried a different flash drive from the start.

 

[DeltaMac]

Glad to hear you have it working now!

I go through several flash drives a year. The flash drives that I use for OS X installers don't seem to last very long, particularly after a few full erase and installs. Often, the process will get slower and slower each time I do full restores.
I am waiting to set up a decent external USB 3.0 enclosure with an SSD where I can have multiple OS X installers on the same drive. That should get past the challenges that I have with slow flash drives. I am just about done with doing those kind of setups on the cheap...

 

[curmudgeonette]

I'm actually not sure what the Mac OS X base system is, it has been there from the start.

It wasn't there in the first pictures. Hmmm - I bet the SL installer was running in the first set of pictures.

The Mac OS X Base System that you see is the normally-hidden partition on your hard drive that holds the Recovery system for Lion.

Great that @Macbrainwracked got things going. And I learned something (i.e. Base System) too.

 

[DeltaMac]

The first set of pictures shows OP booted to Snow Leopard, which doesn't show the recovery system (doesn't support it, either). You can change settings through the terminal to make the hidden partitions appear, but I am not sure that will happen when booted to the Snow Leopard installer.

The later set shows the OP booted to the recovery system, which is running Lion.