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Ops... I might have downloaded leopard... and it's not working

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MacAodh

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 3, 2006
247
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Dublin, Eire
hi all,
I might have made a woopsy, I downloaded the beta of leopard (now third last one... think 466) and now my macbook won't start. It's just hanging on that grey screen with the new age beachball thing. I tried to launch disk utility from both the new dvd and my old apple disk but still not going further then grey screen.

I know i shouldn't have done it... but i know I'm going to buy the actual copy when it comes so i don't feel to bad. Does anyone have any ideas as to what to do? (this probably should be the time to hang my head in shame and admit that i didn't back up... now i feel stupid, especially since I have an external drive for that exact reason... dum dum dum dum dum!!!!)
 
How far did you get, so you downloaded Leopard, burned the DVD, booted from the disk, and chose 'archive & install' right? (I assume archive otherwise all your data would be gone)

Then did Leopard ever boot up?
 
Burned the disk, booted from it, went through the installation procedure and then it asked me to restart. From there it went to the grey screen for about 10/15 minutes till i got sick of it and restarted with out the cd in. the next restart was on the grey screen for about an hour till i gave up, left it booting up and went to a friends house to use there computer to ask for help!!!
 
Sounds to me that you did a complete install? Have you tried resetting the pram? Control Option P and R right after the comp boots. Try also booting from the disk and repair it if necessary.
 
have you tried restarting using the restore dvd that came with your macbook?
 
yea, might have been a full install... trying to think how much i've lost now... hopefully not too much anyway. i can't boot from the cd, sorry, meant to say i tried that too. After the good while i left it trying to boot i got my old cd and tried to boot from that and to no avail but will try the other option when i get back. just want to have all my bases covered when i get back (or borrow friends laptop so i can trouble shoot while at home...)
 
right so... I've managed to get it to load the leopard DVD and used disk utility to make sure that; A, there's no problems with the disk and B, unless it's a very large install my files are still there.

So going to clean my external hard drive and try time machine out to back up the files, then erase and reinstall i think is the best option...

Even if this means i can't get my files till October when leopard comes out that's not the worst... At least I'll then get it
 
Press F8 when it starts up (is that on real macs aswell? ;/)
When you get a prompt type -v and press enter.

You will get a verbose boot and therefor a lot of messages while booting instead of a grey screen. Look what the last lines seems to say when it stops and figure out what is wrong from there.

My OS X hack skills are getting forgotten it seems, anyway there is something you can type in the console which should make OS X redo all stuff which is required to making the disk bootable, and then you can remove your /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache and /System/Library/Extensions.mkext and OS X will redo them during the next boot.

This might require that you remount the disk read-writeable... And I think it's mounted in /Volumes/name of your disk.

Anyway, without basic unix knowledge I doubt any of that will help you much. I could have written it step by step I guess, but I'm lazy, check insanelymac ;D

(Also I don't know how much such things helps with a real mac.)
 
A: no it wasn't legal
B: Unlike most of the world we, in the Irish Republic, speak hiberno English (just like Americans speak american english... etc). there is no official dictionary for this therefore there is no correct spelling and no wrong spelling!!! so their... dum or dumb it don't mater me!!
C: I've managed to create an image of the disk and put it on an external hard drive, the problem now is that it's so slow to try doing anything it's taking a couple of hours every time i try something new. But i think i'm getting there, thanks all for your help
 
Talk about how to help you with pirated software is against Forum rules.
I don't expect this thread to last much longer...
 
I know, and I'm not normally one to bring the subject up but... Quick question to all, am I able to format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system on to that, or will that not work?
 
MacAodh said:
B: Unlike most of the world we, in the Irish Republic, speak hiberno English (just like Americans speak american english... etc). there is no official dictionary for this therefore there is no correct spelling and no wrong spelling!!! so their... dum or dumb it don't mater me!!
Click to expand...

Oh yes there is.

You could try correcting your grammar too but i guess you are going to say there isn't a grammar book for hiberno english either...

Lastly, i know how you can fix the problem. However it will take me some time to translate from Cork Hiberno english to Dublin Hiberno** english so someone else will probably get there ahead of me.

**This could take weeks though since i don't have either dictionaries.
 
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A that's just bad. I've been using that excuse for ages now. Let me get a knife, a fork and a hat and I shall begin. :(.
 
Before you format and reinstall, try another archive and install with the original computer Restore DVD.

or simply use somebody else's Mac and boot you machine in target mode, and recover the files off the drive.
 
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