Q: OS X 10.3 install hangs at 76-85%
I've bought an old iMac G3 333MHz, it has CD-only optical drive, no WiFi, no firewire. I've changed its hard drive to 120GB and want to install OS X 10.3, to use the WiFi adapter that doesn't have drivers for earlier systems. Computer now has 128MB RAM, the hard drive and optical drive both work fine and I was able to install OS 8.5, 9.2.2 and 10.1, everything worked fine, no problems. The hard drive has 2 partitions 7,7GB for the system and one with the rest volume of the drive. But when it comes to Panther install the problems begin. Sometimes I can't boot iMac from install CD, it hangs on white screen with logo. It occured pretty often, but when I removed the 256MB RAM and left only one 128MB chip it became more stable. The installation begins fine, it verifies the CD and it's okay, I verified HD with Disk Utility and it's also fine. But the process of writing files sometimes goes slower and slower sometimes not, but anyway it gets unresponsive at 76-85% (I suppose depending at what components I choose to install). When I verify the CD with Disk Utility it says it has "Error: No valid packages (-9997)". Is it normal for CD and could this be the reason of my problem? And if so, how can I fix that? Is there a way to verify the install CD besides the Disk Utility? I have a 3 CD install set, which I've got along with the iMac. Any help and comments are much appreciated!
iMac, Mac OS X (10.1.x)
Posted on Mar 17, 2016 4:44 AM
Yes RAM can be very unstable. Be sure to have the right RAM for your Mac*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
Also make sure the PRAM battery battery is under 4 years old.
* Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Posted on Mar 22, 2016 7:07 PM