"Prohibatory sign" when trying to install from usb dvd drive

[ddehr026]

Hey all,

I am having a slight issue trying to install snow leopard or leopard from a usb dvd drive. The optical drive is broken in this macbook so I am using a usb drive. I put the cd in (tried with both SL and leopard) hold down option and select the cd when it pops up. The screen goes to the apple logo and then gives me the prohibitory sign (circle with the line through it). I am not quite sure what to make of it.

I have Snow Leopard currently installed on the machine and it boots just fine an acts completely normal without the usb dvd drive attached, so I am pretty sure the hard drive is fine. I also ran a hardware test, repaired permissions, reset pram, and ran disk utility.

I am thinking it could possibly be my usb dvd drive is starting to flake out too, is this possible?

Thanks

 

[movieboy23]

While I think the problem is with the USB DVD drive, I don't think the drive is necessarily failing. Sometimes the OS doesn't like booting from Apple discs using a third party drive. What you could try instead would be to create a disc image of the disc using Disk Utility, put that new image on an external hard drive or flash drive and boot from that.

Good luck.

 

[ddehr026]

While I think the problem is with the USB DVD drive, I don't think the drive is necessarily failing. Sometimes the OS doesn't like booting from Apple discs using a third party drive. What you could try instead would be to create a disc image of the disc using Disk Utility, put that new image on an external hard drive or flash drive and boot from that.

Good luck.

Awesome. That's what I was thinking too. Ill give that a shot and update back. Thanks for the reply.

 

[amvickers]

Same Issue!

Hey guys!

I'm having the exact same issue and I've extracted the SL install disc using the Disk Utility onto an external. I'm still getting the prohibitory sign! Any suggestions?

 

[session101]

try a usb flash drive instead