Re: Leopard DVD Boot failure question

In article <stevewjackson-BBEBC4.15540812112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Steve W. Jackson" <stevewjackson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <invalid-D7AA7C.13592612112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Madwen <invalid@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <stevewjackson-94E61E.10254112112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Steve W. Jackson" <stevewjackson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <invalid-D54FDE.16244909112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Madwen <invalid@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <stevewjackson-03DDCE.12475809112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Steve W. Jackson" <stevewjackson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Before concluding that I have received a defective DVD, it
occurs to me to wonder about something, however. The minimum
system requirements say 512MB of memory, and this system has
only 256MB. Would the install DVD fail to boot if there's
insufficient memory? Or is it more likely that I have in
fact received bad media?

Did you let it check the media before you ran the installer?

Before the installer can run, the DVD must first boot. Since the DVD
doesn't boot, it could not check the media. I did so manually via Disk
Utilities, finding nothing.

Yes, well your original post was not very clear to say the least. You
went right from the Leopard purchase to booting w/o ever specifying at
what point you had a boot failure or the various steps in between. I
thought you meant that your computer failed to boot either after you hit
the "Install Leopard" icon or after attempting to install Leopard. And
I had good reason to assume that since you said:

"When I let it restart on request, it wouldn't boot. "

What exactly made that request? As I recall, it is the installer that
makes the restart request *after* it recognizes the DVD and after you
actually click the "Install Leopard" icon. So your computer must have
at least recognized the Leopard installer disk and it must have started
to run if it said it needed to restart in order to install.

Furthermore, it's pretty clear that the media check mechanism is a
separate operation as it would be fruitless to embed the process in the
very application you are attempting to check.

I'm not sure what it was about my original post or the reply suggests a
need to snap at me...if you don't think one or the other was completely
clear, saying so is sufficient.

I did say so and I elaborated so as to be clear. Your perception of
snapping is erroneous I assure you. :)

Let me recap with what I hope is more clarity.

I put the new Leopard DVD into the iMac and double-clicked the icon for
the installer when it appeared. It pretty quickly asked for permission
to restart, so I clicked the button to let it, but it never did -- it
just churned away while making sounds clearly indicating that it was at
least trying to read from the DVD...for twenty-some minutes or more.
BTW, I have been around a while, so none of this is new to me -- except
the part where it didn't boot. ;)

What I was attempting to find out was what exactly failed to boot--- the
DVD, the installer on the DVD, or your computer. Since the DVD actually
gave you instruction, it seems to have been recognized by your drive
leading one to believe that the drive is indeed DVD capable. Given
that, it would be helpful to try it on another Mac to see if it would
progress further than it did on your iMac or, at minimum, to let the
media check protocol run before the installer. Of course, you may not
have realized there was even a media-check protocol since it's not even
mentioned in the instructions. I also wondered whether you had maybe
put the DVD in the drive and set the system preference pane on your
computer to restart off the DVD. I thought you might have done that to
perhaps run Disk Utility from the DVD before actually installing
Leopard.

A number of other possibilities occurred to me. Maybe that's because
I've installed Leopard 4 times now: on a FW drive, on a second internal
drive in my Quicksilver, on a G4 iBook and on a Core Duo 2 iMac. The
installs on (and from) the Quicksilver took more than twice as long as
the other two. And there were several instances when I thought maybe
the whole thing had just stalled. Even the preparation to install
before the DVD restarted my computer took an inordinately long time. I
assumed this was because of the processor speed (867 MHz). My QS does
have 1.2 GB of RAM, unlike your iMac.

So I stopped the machine and made a second attempt. That is, I
restarted the iMac and held the 'C' key to have it boot from the optical
drive, where the DVD was still in place. I got the same result.

Wondering if perhaps the DVD wasn't good, I booted back into Tiger and
let Disk Utility verify it. It said all was well.

(Someone else inquired whether I ever tried holding the Option key to
see if the DVD was seen as bootable, and I have not done that. Also, I
know the drive isn't bad because I recently did a new erase and install
of Tiger from the system's own DVD after getting a new logic board and
power supply.)

At that point, I initially assumed I had a bad DVD. But then it
occurred to me that the iMac didn't have the required minimum amount of
RAM, as I said. So the new RAM is due to arrive tomorrow, but I thought
I'd inquire as to whether it *could* be possible (if anyone happened to
have direct knowledge) that the installer DVD would refuse to boot
because of that fact.

Based on the variety of responses, I'm gathering that nobody has direct
knowledge that it *would* refuse to boot for this reason, though some
responses suggested it might. So I'm actually halfway expecting that
putting in the new RAM won't resolve the issue and that I'll end up
needing to get the DVD replaced. But maybe I'm wrong...we'll see.

Have you tried the DVD on another computer? If it brings up the
installer window, you can do a thorough check on the media without
really running the installer. I'm betting that the 512 MB RAM
requirement is there for a good reason.

Madeleine
.

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