Need help on booting from install disc

[Black Diesel]

All,

I got the grey screen on my iMac. After trying all the boot from safe mode, fsck commands, etc my iMac still won't boot and gets stuck on the grey screen. I have leopard OSX but can' find the original leopard install disc. I do however have a Snow Leopard installation disc.

Question - would I be able to boot from the Snow Leopard installation disc even though the iMac is Leopard? Would it be able to update the OSX successfully?

Thanks

 

[CASLondon]

All,

I got the grey screen on my iMac. After trying all the boot from safe mode, fsck commands, etc my iMac still won't boot and gets stuck on the grey screen. I have leopard OSX but can' find the original leopard install disc. I do however have a Snow Leopard installation disc.

Question - would I be able to boot from the Snow Leopard installation disc even though the iMac is Leopard? Would it be able to update the OSX successfully?

Thanks

You should be able to boot from the snow leopard install disc, with the option to install SL or to launch the disk utility, which you can use to run hardware diagnostics and disk utility to fix permissions, etc, to try to clear the fault

I'm not sure you will be able to (or should want to) upgrade to SL in this state, until you figure out what the problem is. If you have a working recent backup (and you should!) then you could do a clean install and migrate data over from it.

 

[Black Diesel]

You should be able to boot from the snow leopard install disc, with the option to install SL or to launch the disk utility, which you can use to run hardware diagnostics and disk utility to fix permissions, etc, to try to clear the fault

I'm not sure you will be able to (or should want to) upgrade to SL in this state, until you figure out what the problem is. If you have a working recent backup (and you should!) then you could do a clean install and migrate data over from it.

I tried it and it failed...if I boot in single user mode and try that /sbin fsck command it tells me under Checking Catalog file: Incorrect block count for file pcscd.pub (it should be 16 instead of 17)

And then it starts over and says it's repairing the volume and gives me the "The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully".

Then I type "reboot" and it fails again at the grey sreen and tells me
"you need to restart your computer"

 

[CASLondon]

I tried it and it failed...if I boot in single user mode and try that /sbin fsck command it tells me under Checking Catalog file: Incorrect block count for file pcscd.pub (it should be 16 instead of 17)

And then it starts over and says it's repairing the volume and gives me the "The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully".

Then I type "reboot" and it fails again at the grey sreen and tells me
"you need to restart your computer"

If you want to upgrade it anyway, and you have a backup, then boot from the install disk and do a clean install and see what happens, then you can migrate over and see what happens. You can re-format the disk first if you like

 

[Black Diesel]

I took it to the genius bar and they couldn't get it to start up either, it's giving us a kernel error. Genius bar said the graphics card is roasted. I'm going to get it replaced and keep it for a second machine assuming the new iMacs will be out any day now.

 

[CASLondon]

I took it to the genius bar and they couldn't get it to start up either, it's giving us a kernel error. Genius bar said the graphics card is roasted. I'm going to get it replaced and keep it for a second machine assuming the new iMacs will be out any day now.

Sorry to hear that, but you did the right thing and now you know what's broken. If you look around you might find a second hand card from one of the mac junkyards around online. I did that for some previous repairs.