[Flip500]

Hello, so basically I was having kernal panics that made me shut down my computer every 10 minutes. Because of this I plugged it into another computer and used my laptop (older ~2007 mac book pro 15") as a hard drive (holding t while turning on) to copy off important. I also used this setup and disk utility to completely delete my harddrive.

Now it has the correct single "macnitosh hd" partition and is all formatted correctly. But there is no base os now! So I cannot use my leopard or snowleopard discs to install because they're "just update discs". So what should I do, it will be EXTREMELY inconvienient to go to the nearest apple store. I have made an entire disc image of my friend's newer mac, thinking that I could install that and then erase with a snow leopard disc and then be left with just the os; but I cannot figure out how to install the image. And with the snow leaopard disc in it cannot pick up the "macintosh hd" .dmg that I got from my friend because it was not made by time machine.

Please help! I'm in college and need my computer for homework yesterday! Thanks and excuse typos etc please I'm typing all this on my droid........

[Big Mac]

Something's mixed up here. Apple doesn't produce OS X discs that are just upgrade discs - they're always full installation discs. What happens when you boot from the install disc and try to install? What error message do you receive? My assumption is that there's something wrong with your internal drive that caused the problems you experienced and that is preventing you from reinstalling the OS.

[Flip500]

Well it says something along the lines of "10.5 cannot be installed because 10.4 is not present on the drive", the specifics vary a little from the leopard disc (when iit loads sometimes it simply ejects) and the snow leopard disc; but the basic message is that something else needs to be there and is missing.

I'm in class right now but I have my friends computer set up mounting the .dmg I made from another computer, and once that finishes I'm going to attempt to restore my "macintosh hd" with that mounted .dmg using disk utility on my friends computer, if that works in theory I should be able to corrrectly erase this time and not mess everything up......

[Big Mac]

That's really odd. Are you using a standard retail OS X disc?

[Flip500]

Well with the "cpu drop-in DVD" for "version 10.5" I try to launch from disc and it will spin (I can hear it) and sometimes the apple will appear but then it just ejects the disc. That is the disc that came boxed with my mbp to begin with.

However, I can boot from the snow leopard disc just fine, but then I will get the errors as discribed above.

[olePigeon]

Do you still have the original discs that came with your MacBook Pro?

What you have to do is install 10.4 first onto the MacBook Pro (do a minimal install, uncheck printers, languages, etc.) Next, boot from the 10.5 drop-in DVD. Click on the options button (at least I think it's options...) and do a Clean Install. This will erase the HDD before installing a clean 10.5 system. Uncheck everything again and do a minimal install. Now boot from the 10.6 drop-in DVD, click options, and do a normal, Clean Install.

You should now have a clean 10.6 system on your MacBook Pro.

[Flip500]

Awwww sorry to double post but I think I figured out the most obvious and best option finally! Rather than using my friends identical model mbp as a portal for the other .dmg and hdd and my mbp.... I'm simply restoring my mbp from his mbp's hd. Essential exactly what I was trying at first but this is dramatically more direct and I believe will actually work. I'm very excited.

[Flip500]

olepigeon, that would be my first choice but I have no where to get the 10.4 os from, it's that base that I need to work from, but I don't have access to: unless that is I can get it by copying over another persons entire harddrive just to delete all their stuff and do a clean install with a 10.6 (or any for that matter) disc. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've got the right idea, the problem is just getting it to work.

[turtle777]

Try this:

How to install Leopard from a CPU Drop-in DVD without Tiger | monline

-t

[Flip500]

Well my problem was that the leopard disc would spin and then just eject itself... but that sounds like it would work with the snow leopard disc because that is what was happening with that... but... I have 17 minutes left on the copy of the hd copy so I'm gonna hope this works! Thanks

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Try this:

How to install Leopard from a CPU Drop-in DVD without Tiger | monline

-t

Ooo, thanks.

[Flip500]

......to follow up, the copy worked perfectly.... but the leopard disc still wouldn't read and kept ejecting itself. And the snow leopard disc I had wouldn't work and did not have the "glitch" that the link described.... so I'm off to the apple store......... damnn..

[Waragainstsleep]

If you have all the discs that came with your MBP then you have 10.4 somewhere. The drop in discs didn't have iLife if I recall correctly. If you have a set of grey "Restore Discs" then they will have 10.4 and iLife on. Probably stuff like quickbooks and maybe Xcode etc too.
Boot from disc 1 and follow instructions. Then use the drop in once you are done with the restore set.

Alternatively if you have access to a friends MBP, then boot yours as a firewire target drive, boot the other one from its original DVD. Then just choose your drive as the install target. If the other unit is older than yours, then run software update before disconnecting yours or you won't have all the drivers you need.

[Flip500]

all I have is the purple and black "galaxy" leopard drop-in disc, and my friend with the other mbp doesn't have any discs.

But if anyone is interested/in my main problem (not that I started this thread about it) but I brought my computer to the apple store, they reset it, it was working beautifully, the last stage of me setting up my computer was to install all the software updates. I hit the restart button after all updates had been selected, I left and came back 10 minutes later to find that there had been a kernal panic 3/4 of the way through installing the updates!

So my main theory is that it was not only the mac os software but more specifically the firmware, that is messing everything up. This is because, I rarely can even start my computer normally, I get kernal panics while booted in safe-mode and even when booted from a disk. So I'm headed back to apple today, going to erase again, and then only update itunes because my current itunes library was created by the most recent itunes....

Any other ideas on the main problem, and thanks for all the other help.