hi guys, sry if im posting this in the wrong place but im in a kind of a hurry. i was upgrading from 10.5 to 10.6 using the dmg of the installer dvd. the installer was working fine but it quitted and tended to restart after like 15 minutes. i thought this was normal but during the booting i get a gray screen with the icon of a folder with a questionmark on it and it just keeps on flashing. i rebooted the system and held down the option key so i got to choose between my os' drive and a windows drive (which is kind of weird cause i dont have a windows installation on my mac i only have ubuntu 9.04). i choose the os' drive and i can boot into my previous os, 10.5.8. i have no idea why this has happened and how i can fix it? would you guys be kind enough to help me out? i really need my laptop for this weekend.
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leopard->snowleopard URGENT!
- Thread starter bamdad
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I assume that you have a backup of your data?
If you do, try rebooting to the DVD and install fresh. My understanding is that the "!" means that it can't locate the OS, so something didn't copy over correctly.
You just said you can boot into 10.5.8. Is that not good enough?
I'd recommend buying the upgrade DVD and using that rather than a .dmg. The issue is that when you reboot your dmg does not stay mounted so it cannot install fully.
ViViDboarder is right. You should not be installing operating systems from a DMG file. The only recourse you have is to do a fresh install, then use migration assistant to migrate your backup over.
yes i know the reason why, when you install a new operating system onto ur mac, it thinks u are going to be booting from a flash drive or a cd. now u did this from leopard as a downloaded dmg file. this will not work unless u put that file onto a flash drive or disc because it was restarting as normal, but then it was trying to read the snow leopard information, which u did not have because it was on your leopard partition, and it cannot access this because this is not part of the normal installation. now by default when u hit option when booting up, and u have another partition other than another version of mac os x, it automatically names it windows, u can download an application that can hack into ur computer and change it, by hack i mean tweak. good luck
well i did this
thanks for the fast replies. well i have already burned the dmg on a DL DVD but even when i tell my mac to boot from the dvd after a restart i end up with the question mark. my idea is that my system is unable to boot from the dvd for some reason. and yes it is a relief that i can still boot to my last os. and about buying the disk im in a very strange position. i live in iran and we have no apple stores here. so i had to work with the dmg. i even asked one of my friends to buy the package for me and have it shipped to me but apple doesnt provide any services in iran so im tied up and i really need to get my hands on SLs openCL support for my research
thanks for the fast replies. well i have already burned the dmg on a DL DVD but even when i tell my mac to boot from the dvd after a restart i end up with the question mark. my idea is that my system is unable to boot from the dvd for some reason. and yes it is a relief that i can still boot to my last os. and about buying the disk im in a very strange position. i live in iran and we have no apple stores here. so i had to work with the dmg. i even asked one of my friends to buy the package for me and have it shipped to me but apple doesnt provide any services in iran so im tied up and i really need to get my hands on SLs openCL support for my research
thanks for the fast replies. well i have already burned the dmg on a DL DVD but even when i tell my mac to boot from the dvd after a restart i end up with the question mark. my idea is that my system is unable to boot from the dvd for some reason. and yes it is a relief that i can still boot to my last os. and about buying the disk im in a very strange position. i live in iran and we have no apple stores here. so i had to work with the dmg. i even asked one of my friends to buy the package for me and have it shipped to me but apple doesnt provide any services in iran so im tied up and i really need to get my hands on SLs openCL support for my research
So even when booting you can't boot to the DVD when you hold down the option key? Only the Old OS and the "windows" or rather Ubuntu partition?
Try using your Leopard recovery disk and then doing the upgrade the right way with a disk and not a dmg. If you can't boot the Leopard disk you'll be having a bit of trouble. There has to be a way to force boot though somehow.
Basically, I'm suggesting trying to fix Leopard first completely and then try again from the top.
For future reference: you can restore an installer DMG to a disk partition
using Disk Utility and then boot off that partition. It's just like booting from
an installer DVD, but faster. The restore partition need only be 7GB or so
and you can delete it after you've installed the full OS and reclaim the space.
im sry if im being a nub but does this mean that i would need to create a new partition? or will i be putting the dmg on another part of my hard drive? cause i hve seen people do this with memory sticks but it requires a total format of the memory stick
If you installed from a .DMG, you can't actually upgrade to OS as the old OS is already running. What you did was a half-install which has screwed up your system.