MacBook with broken CD drive; need to reinstall OS X

[cook.675]

A friend gave me her old macbook, its a MacBook 1.1, intel core duo, 2 GHz, 2 GB Ram. It won't run lion, the latest it will take is snow leopard

Anyway, she wants me to wipe/format her hard drive for the exchange. Her CD drive is broken. I do have a 10.6 install disc, so what I did was transfer this to USB and tried to install 10.6 from the USB on her system, but its telling me i can't. I tried loading all the 10.6 startup files to her main HD and loading it like that, but again it tell me that I cant.

How can I reinstall 10.6 and format the HD if it won't let me run the software from the USB/HD and her CD drive is broken?

Thanks

 

[teleromeo]

Perhaps with an external DVD drive. Tell system preferences to start up from it and do the install.
If you have firewire you can go into target mode and use another mac to do the install.

 

[cook.675]

Tried external DVD drive. Everything looked fine; I double clicked the leopard icon from finder and it started loading and crashed, I did it again and after loading a box popped up saying "OS X 10.6 can't be installed on this computer" (its running 10.6.8 right now)

i changed the startup disc to the DVD drive and restarted. After loading for while a box popped up that said "OS X can't be installed on this computer" and gave me options to restore from backup or reboot. the second message didn't say 10.6.

tried it one more time and same thing happened.

The disc im running is a random "13-inch MacBook Pro Install DVD", an obviously didn't come with this computer, but that shouldn't matter right? Do you think a stock snow leopard install DVD would work? any ideas?

 

[AppleFanatic10]

Tried external DVD drive. Everything looked fine; I double clicked the leopard icon from finder and it started loading and crashed, I did it again and after loading a box popped up saying "OS X 10.6 can't be installed on this computer" (its running 10.6.8 right now)

i changed the startup disc to the DVD drive and restarted. After loading for while a box popped up that said "OS X can't be installed on this computer" and gave me options to restore from backup or reboot. the second message didn't say 10.6.

tried it one more time and same thing happened.

The disc im running is a random "13-inch MacBook Pro Install DVD", an obviously didn't come with this computer, but that shouldn't matter right? Do you think a stock snow leopard install DVD would work? any ideas?

U can only use the Install DVD that came with your MacBook. U would have to call Apple to get the correct DVD, I think it's like $20.

 

[Nermal]

The disc im running is a random "13-inch MacBook Pro Install DVD", an obviously didn't come with this computer, but that shouldn't matter right? Do you think a stock snow leopard install DVD would work? any ideas?

You can't use that one; you need a white retail DVD.

U can only use the Install DVD that came with your MacBook. U would have to call Apple to get the correct DVD, I think it's like $20.

A MacBook 1,1 would have come with 10.4, so to install 10.6 a retail DVD is needed.