[WizOSX]

I bought the Snow Leopard disk about a week ago to install on my 17" iMac (2ghz Core2Duo, 3gb RAM). First I tried to do an upgrade from the Leopard that was already working on the machine (10.5.8). No go:

Yellow exclamation point about 5 minutes into the install. "Install failed. Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer. The installer could not copy the necessary support files."

Since then I have done the following (pretty much in the following order):
1. Called Apple and they sent me a new Snow Leopard disk. Same result.
2. Talked to local Apple store who said it was almost certainly a DVD drive problem.
3. Tried installing from an external USB DVD drive. No luck.
4. Reset PRAM. No luck.
5. Erased and reformatted the hard drive (disk utility from the Snow Leopard disk). MacOS/Journalling/GUID, one partition. Zeroed the drive. Still no luck from the internal DVD drive.
6. Used my MacBook Pro (i5) as an external firewire target disk. As before, iMac initially booted from the 10.6.3 disk, got through about 5 minutes, no luck.

Keep getting the same message. I am totally mystified. Any suggestions.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by WizOSX 

I bought the Snow Leopard disk about a week ago to install on my 17" iMac (2ghz Core2Duo, 3gb RAM). First I tried to do an upgrade from the Leopard that was already working on the machine (10.5.8). No go:

Yellow exclamation point about 5 minutes into the install. "Install failed. Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer. The installer could not copy the necessary support files."

Since then I have done the following (pretty much in the following order):
1. Called Apple and they sent me a new Snow Leopard disk. Same result.
2. Talked to local Apple store who said it was almost certainly a DVD drive problem.
3. Tried installing from an external USB DVD drive. No luck.
4. Reset PRAM. No luck.
5. Erased and reformatted the hard drive (disk utility from the Snow Leopard disk). MacOS/Journalling/GUID, one partition. Zeroed the drive. Still no luck from the internal DVD drive.
6. Used my MacBook Pro (i5) as an external firewire target disk. As before, iMac initially booted from the 10.6.3 disk, got through about 5 minutes, no luck.

Keep getting the same message. I am totally mystified. Any suggestions.

Boot the iMac in Firewire Disk Mode, then connect it to and boot the MacBook Pro from the Install DVD. When installing choose the iMac's drive to install 10.6 on, then let it finish, when it's done, unplug everything and restart the iMac. Presto. It will work. I used this method to install OS X on many a computers with busted DVD drives.

[WizOSX]

Thanks, King.

Following your suggestion I did get 10.6.3 working on the iMac. Actually, I had tried this yesterday but the MacBook Pro would not boot from the 10.6.3 retail disk. So I just located the original disk that came with the MacBook Pro. It is also 10.6.3 but the machine did boot from it. Since they are both 10.6.3, I have no idea why the MacBook Pro would not boot from the retail disk. Maybe Apple only folds machine specifics in at the next update. If so this is annoying because if I'd waited a bit and gotten a 10.6.4 retail disk I would assume it would boot the MacBook Pro. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Another weird things: The icon for hard drive is not on the desktop. I can see it if I open finder from the dock and access it that way.

So it seems that it is a faulty or weak DVD drive--but then why wouldn't it work from an external DVD drive?

[P]

I think booting from USB is flaky on the first Intel Macs. That could be it.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by WizOSX 

Another weird things: The icon for hard drive is not on the desktop. I can see it if I open finder from the dock and access it that way.

Are you sure the Finder is set to show drives on the desktop?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by P 

I think booting from USB is flaky on the first Intel Macs. That could be it.

It's a Core2Duo, which is second-generation.

[WizOSX]

….....................

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Are you sure the Finder is set to show drives on the desktop?

You're right on this, it wasn't. Fixed now.
Since I typically install/reinstall OS X about once a year, I always forget that the HD icon isn't automatically put on the desktop. And I'm always mystified again. Things like this keep life fresh, I guess.

[Waragainstsleep]

I think the 'show disks on desktop' option was recently changed by default to off.