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royboy · Apr 5, 2008, 08:00 PM

just put a new hard drive in my wifes G3 600 iBook. trying to install 10.3 on it and several times now I get a message from the installer saying" there were errors installing the software. please try installing again." I've tried disk utility on the new hard drive, verifying, repairing, erasing. Same result. Its happened 3 or 4 times now.

Any suggestion of what might be going on and what I need to do about it?

And, for what it's worth, before I changed out the drive, I firewire-connected it in target mode to my G3 400 iMac and copied the contents of her hard drive into a folder on the iMac. thinking I could restore from that. but I'm not sure if that was the right procedure as it doesn't show up as a disk to restore from when I hook the iMac back up in target mode via firewire.

knowing just enough toi get in trouble - Roy

chris v · Apr 6, 2008, 06:54 AM

did you just do a drag-and drop copy? If so, your data will be okay, but that won't have given you a viable system backup.

Where's the drive you took out? You could put it into a Firewire enclosure, then use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to copy the old drive back to the new one. (If a G3 600 supports FW booting -- I'm not too sure on this)

Edit: Are you using a retail copy of 10.3? If it was an OEM disk that shipped with a different model of a machine, that might preclude you being able to use it.

royboy · Apr 6, 2008, 07:06 AM

chris - I did drag-and-drop copy the hard drive. how should I have done it?

I don't have a firewire enclosure, bur maybe I can find one.

it is a retail copy of 10.3. not certain but I believe its the same one I used to originally install on it. I know I've used it to change the admin password on the iBook. is there any predictable way it would behave if not compatible with the iBook? in this case, the installer log ends up saying "some files for Essentials may not have been written incorrectly"

I can ask friends and see if someone has another 10.3 install disk set I can try ...

would a problem with the hard drive produce this sort of problem?

thanks - Roy

analogika · Apr 6, 2008, 07:14 AM

Did you allow it to go through the entire Install Disk Verification process, or did you skip it?

Possible that the optical drive in the iBook is starting to go south.

royboy · Apr 6, 2008, 07:39 AM

most of my attempts I let it verify the install disk - no problems noted. a couple tries I skipped the verification.

more precise to say that the installer window did not note problems - installer log showed 3 mentions of: "root_bootstrap_look_up(): unknown error code"

optical drive is kind of noisy but seems like a sort of unfortunate time to for it to not work. and wouldn't optical problems be more random, rather than hanging up at the same place each time?

thanks - Roy

royboy · Apr 6, 2008, 08:17 AM

watching a couple more install attempts, I see it is not hanging up at the same place each time. so far always while "processing base system part 2." installer log reads:

ERROR: Could not read archive file. - pax: End of archive volme 1 reached -

ERROR: Could not write file. - pax: WARNING! These patterns were not matched: -

It sounds like the optical drive spins down when I think this is happening.

Roy

Cold Warrior · Apr 6, 2008, 09:56 AM

Put your iBook into Firewire target disk mode, connect it to your iMac, and insert the 10.3 disc into the iMac. Boot your iMac from the 10.3 disc (if it'll do that) and go through the installation steps to choose your iBook's hard drive.

See if it'll do the installation that way.

royboy · Apr 6, 2008, 02:55 PM

interesting idea, CW, and I tried it, but the iMac when booted from the install disk, it did not show the iBook hard drive as a potential destination for the install (just showed the iMac drive).

now I've borrowed another set of install discs from a friend - 2 disks for 10.3.4 for an eMac - and, curiously enough - the install hung up at the 98% level of "processing base system part 2" - which is where I first saw a hangup with the other set of install disks. this is a PITA.

AND I appreciate the suggestions!!!

got any more?

chris v · Apr 6, 2008, 05:03 PM

Try it the other way around. Put the install disk in the iMac, and boot IT if FW target disk mode,and see if the install disk shows up on your iBook. It seems to me I've gotten that to work in the past on a machine that didn't have a DVD drive.

royboy · Apr 6, 2008, 07:49 PM

hey Cold Warrior - I tried it again: firewire connection & iBook in target disk mode, install disk in iMac. booted iMac from install disk and installed to iBook. it worked!!!

thank you all for your thoughts & ideas on this!

last question: I now have contents of the old iBook hard drive drag-drop copied onto the iMac. would definitely like to restore as much of old settings and documents as possible to the new drive. software I can reinstall (or copy back if it's easy).

what's best way to copy stuff back? drag-drop User folder from old disk? will it work to copy applications that way too or should I reinstall them. anything else to restore settings/prefs or will that come in User folder

Cold Warrior · Apr 6, 2008, 08:35 PM

Glad it worked.

Many apps will work just fine as drag-drop. You'll lose specific user/interface settings though, unless you copy their plist files back into ~/library/preferences/ (assuming that's their original path).

If you have any issues with certain apps, just delete them and reinstall from their CD or installer file.

I suggest you drag-drop via firewire. Just put your iMac in target disk mode and copy what you want. It'll be faster than ethernet (direct or over a LAN), CD/DVD burn, or dropping first to a memory stick.

royboy · Apr 7, 2008, 05:31 PM

well, the difficulty in installing to this new drive continues. was successful in installing 10.3 via firewire & target-mode from my iMac. then I went to install the combo updater to 10.3.9 and it started all over again.

a couple tries using software update loaded the whole 117 MB each time but wouldn't/couldn't install. then I tried via the apple,com download site. that one led to the same sort of "errors during install" message as when I was trying to install the OS.

figured I'd try the same firewire-from-my-iMac workaround as used with the OS. even that produced errors. then I used disk utility, verified and repaired permissions and disk on the new hard drive, tried again from the iMac and it installed.

I have no clue as to what's going on. mostly I'm hoping this doesn't portend future hassles with installing to this hard drive. any opinions?

meanwhile I'm copying contents of the old drive back across the firewire connection from the iMac. will reboot and see if I can move the right stuff to restore some semblance of what I had before.

also realizing I could have saved myself considerable hassle by creating a bootable copy of the old drive rather than a drag-drop copy. live & learn ...

royboy · Apr 7, 2008, 11:32 PM

well, after all sorts of bs I think I've got the iBook up and functional again. seems like the only way to get stuff to download and install was by doing it through my iMac. but then to get things functional, I had to verify/repair permissions on all the files on the iBook. the last time I did it, after installing the 10.3.9 combo update, via target mode, it looked like I had to redo every permission on the whole hard drive. that's what it looked like, anyway. but, so far, it seems to be functional. hope that continues to be the case.

thanks to all for the ideas and help. its such a good feeling to know that there are all sorts of more experienced folk willing to share what they've learned ...