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Snow Leopard killed my iMac and now won't reinstall. Tried everything. Please help.

M

manicminer

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 10, 2007
12
0
Tokyo
Hi

After my intel iMac froze when running Snow Leopard, I was forced to restart it, and it turned out the HD was corrupted. But after erasing it and performing repair disk, everything is now ok. But since the failure it refuses to reinstall usually giving the message "an error occured when intalling Mac OS X"

For the last few, very frustrating days, I've tried everything I have read on the net: resetting PRAM, checking the HD is set as GUID, erasing and repairing the HD numeous times, performing hardware tests. Even slaughtering farm yard animals. Basically everything. And still it won't install.

I really am at my wits end, and to make matters worse, the genius bar here in Tokyo is so busy I can't get a reservation til Friday evening.

I'd be incredibly grateful for any help at all.

Thanks!
 
What I would do would be to get the files of your hard drive that you want to keep such as music and personal documents if thats feasible and then erasing and reinstalling snow leopard instead of repairing it.

Reaping your hard drive should always be used as a last resort and more often then not it causes problems.
 
Thanks, but I've erased my HD too. In fact I had too because Disk Utility said it couldn't be repaired.

And still it won't reinstall....
 
Sounds like your hard drive is corrupted beyond repair to be honest, take it to a repair centre if possible/in warranty, if not, look at guides to replacing the hard drive yourself. www.ifixit.com has some very good guides.
 
Sounds like your HD is dying dude... I hope you backed up your stuff before erasing it anyway. Do you hear any "clicking" sound when its loading stuff from the disk? The situation really looks like some sectors on your disk are corrupted, and if thats the case then repairing it through OSX won't do the thing but just might get it going for a little longer. On the other hand, it could be the OSX Install DVD itself causing the problems, is it in a good condition? Have you got a spare HD to try and install OSX on that?
 
My initial fear was that the HD was dying, but there haven't been any dodgy noises, and in Disk Utility the HD is said to be fine. Would it still say that if there were any issues?

Definitely not the install disc though, as I borrowed a friends earlier and it was exactly the same deal.

Getting it to an Apple shop here is a real pain, but at the same time I don't fancy changing the HD myself...
 
Well, my old HD died (yep, the crappy and unreliable seagate that came with Mac Pro early 2008) and it did some strange noises before it died, also made everything really slower, but disk utility kept saying its OK. So i wouldn't trust it that much... And you don't need to get it to apple to replace your disk, what model do you have?
 
It still sounds like you're fighting the original issue (that caused the reinstall), which is that your HD is becoming corrupted.

To me, if the OS won't reinstall, that really points towards a hardware problem. Mostly like the drive, but if not, it could be the logic board. :(

You could always try installing the OS to an external drive and seeing how that goes...
 
Thanks for your time sOwl, it's much appreciated.

Mine is a 24 inch first gen Intel iMac.

Really tempted to have a go at changing the HD, but I'm terrified I'll make a real mess of it.
 
aristobrat said:
It still sounds like you're fighting the original issue (that caused the reinstall), which is that your HD is becoming corrupted.

To me, if the OS won't reinstall, that really points towards a hardware problem. Mostly like the drive, but if not, it could be the logic board. :(

You could always try installing the OS to an external drive and seeing how that goes...
Click to expand...

The logic board? Oh crap. That sounds worse then the HD.

Apologies for my ignorance, but what would be the point of installing the OS to an external drive?
 
If it's an intermittent drive error, then the hardware test may not show it. I don't think I've ever had a drive fail where that S.M.A.R.T. notification actually gave me advanced warning. :confused:

If you were able to fully install to an external, then that lessens the likelyhood that your DVD drive is the issue, or the logic board is mucking something up.

IMO, the hardest part about changing an iMac internal drive is keeping the screen dustfree after you pull the glass off. :eek:
 
Yes, that would be your best bet. Try installing onto an external drive. Also, if you really don't feel confident enough to change your internal disk yourself and wanna take it to apple, then you could use your computer normally booting from the external drive untill you get it to apple, and then copy your external to the new disk (well only int he case you did some work while ont he external and you dont want to miss it) or just install again. I'm pretty sure that the problem is your HD
 
Thank you!

Looking at some guides, changing the HD myself doesn't look quite as daunting as I first thought. Apart from dust on the screen issues, is it that difficult?
 
manicminer said:
Thank you!

Looking at some guides, changing the HD myself doesn't look quite as daunting as I first thought. Apart from dust on the screen issues, is it that difficult?
Click to expand...

Heh, well you can swipe it just before you put it back in place. Don't worry about the dust, you can always remove it and clean it again. On a side note, do try on an external disk before buying a new internal, as that would, well almost, make sure that its an HD failure. Otherwise (no real odds here but still a chance) it could be something else and then you'd be spending money on a new HD with no need to
 
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

Sorry to sound stupid again, but when install the OS on an external disk, would that completely erase what was already on the disk?
 
manicminer said:
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

Sorry to sound stupid again, but when install the OS on an external disk, would that completely erase what was already on the disk?
Click to expand...

Yes it would. You can split your external drive into 2 partitions if you like, one would be used for OSX and the other one would remain untouched, but bear in mind that even partitioning the disk would erase it, so on both cases if you got files in it you have the back them up :S
 
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