problem installing 10.6 on older mac mini - help needed

[tollerite]

Hi there,

I'm having a beast of a time trying to get 10.6 to install on an older mac mini.... The installation proceeds in the usual way - but after about 15 minutes the installation stalls with some sage words to the effect that 'installation failed because support files cannot be copied' - or something to that effect.

I'm thinking one of a number of things could be wrong:
1) The dvd drive is dodgy
2) the SL dvd is dodgy
3) the hard drive is dodgy

My question is this. Does anybody have any idea of what to try ? - I'm thinking along the lines of a minimal SL install, reformat the drive, partition the drive, anything to try and get the minimal set of files on there.... can I try and make a disk image or something ?

Incidentally, when I go to 'customize' the install (uncheck the printer, languages, X11 etc.) - I'm left with the 'greyed out ' Essential system software which shows a size of 8Gb..... but I recently did the same thing on a Macbook and the Essential system files for SL came to a mere 3.5 Gb.... Any idea why this install to the Mac Mini is 8Gb ?

Any help/suggestions appreciated -

 

[tollerite]

Thinking about this some more - could my problem be anything to do with SL being a dual-layer DVD ? Maybe this older Mac Mini can only read single layer dvds - read them fully that is.....