Help - "Installation failed" Mac OSX could not be installed

So, is that it then?
Am I left with a dead mac because I don't have apple ram and have to fit it into a mac mini if I did?

I understand your point...but I have a hard time believing that it is only substandard RAM modules. You are assuming that all of the problems are being caused by that, I guess we really have no proof as to what is causing the issues other than people using 3rd party RAM modules without reference to brand or quality.

I guess one question you may want to answer is this-why is it that Leopard is not allowing for this "substandard" RAM when installing, but we have heard many cases where the people can put the modules back in +after installation+ and they work perfectly? To me, this seems more like an incompatibility issue within the installer, not based on the fact that they are substandard modules. Good theory, but I don't think it fits. Otherwise I would think they would also be incompatible with the OS.

Has anyone had a successful install with 3rd party RAM installed? Also, for those of you who had to pull RAM, who manufactured the RAM you pulled? Were they high or low density modules?

See I can agree with you to a point...but what about the customer? You and Apple should know darn well that people would have all of these problems. I don't know if they do, but Apple should have provided info to the customer that a 3rd party RAM pull may be required for installation. I don't think we as the customers shouldn't be responsible to figure that out.

Did you try a PRAM reset?

DId you perform an upgrade or a clean install of the full version of Leopard? If you did an upgrade then it necessarily needed to upgrade your existing system...which would explain why it is gone. If you have a disk utility (such as Norton) try erasing the disk, totally writing zeros across the drive and then see if disk utility recognizes it. I have had that problem from time to time. Once you write the zeros across the drive it should be readable and formattable.

RAM for me also after it wiping out my hard drive that I never installed it on. So, after getting that drive useable again and removing my extra 512MB RAM, install went fine. So, next time I install a new OS, I will unplug the connectors to my main drive that I do not want touched so it should be impossible for an install that I don't even send to the drive to screw things up. I will also remove memory again before any major updates like this even though the memory is good but the installer did not like it I guess.

tj

You are assuming that all of the problems are being caused by {substandard RAM modules} ...

No, I am only saying it is one known cause of this kind of problem & should be considered by those having installation problems, particularly by those who have installed third party RAM modules.

I guess one question you may want to answer is this-why is it that Leopard is not allowing for this "substandard" RAM when installing, but we have heard many cases where the people can put the modules back in after installation and they work perfectly?

1. Define "many." I've only seen a few reports of this & about as many of people replacing the module with another one. Either way, it is a statistically insufficient sample to draw any conclusions from -- Apple has sold over 1 million copies of Leopard.
2. In some cases, the problem isn't marginal RAM but a poor or lightly corroded connection between the module & the socket, so just removing & reinserting it remedies the problem.
3. Diagnosing RAM problems can be tricky, sometimes only showing up under specific data transfer conditions or with certain data patterns. For instance, a single bad bit in a 1 GB module is fairly benign if it is supposed to be storing the low bit of a pixel in a decompressed graphic but can be a big problem if it is storing executable code. More insidious still, a module with poor noise immunity may only misbehave during certain electronic operations -- say, when the DVD drive's head seeks. From a troubleshooting standpoint, the "best" bad module is one that has cells that don't work right 100% of the time; the "worst," one that works right 99.999% of the time.

... Apple should have provided info to the customer that a 3rd party RAM pull may be required for installation. I don't think we as the customers shouldn't be responsible to figure that out.

1. As you can see from the above, it isn't just a matter of pulling it for installation -- that is just a time that it is very likely for a defective module to make itself known in a manner hard to miss.
2. The printed user guide for every Mac I've ever seen that was intended to have user-replaceable RAM mentions that added or replaced RAM modules must meet specs, & gives those specs. Apple can hardly be expected to furnish the arcane technical detail about why this is required in a user guide -- after all, it isn't intended as an introductory mini course in electrical engineering or computer design.
3. Nevertheless, even a complete layman should be able to understand in a general way that defective or out-of-spec parts can cause strange problems in high tech devices, & that when one encounters problems with said devices, such parts are a potential cause. It is not Apple's responsibility to teach that much common sense, although it does advise users that it is not responsible for the performance of third party additions.

My experiences seem to support the 3rd party ram / non-dual layer dvd theories:

I have three Macs: MacBook, PowerBook G4, iMac G5 iSight.

Installed Lepper (that's what I'm calling it now) on the MacBook with no issues. The dock blows - can't tell what apps are running. Some of the features are nice. Not sure I love the finder yet.

I have nothing too important on the MacBook, so that was my guinea pig.

The PowerBook G4 has a single layer dvd burner and 3rd party ram. Install failed 2x, couldn't validate the essentials package. I plan to burn a copy of my install disc and see if that makes a difference. If not, I will try installing from a USB 2.0 non-mac DL DVD burner (have a feeling it won't allow me to use an external dvd drive though). If that fails, will try the target mode workaround from with the MacBook.

My iMac G5 is my "production" machine, and I simply cannot risk losing it or it being down for several days while I restore back ups. I will probably wait until Apple straightens out this mess before I do anything. I don't see anything so compelling in Lepper that would justify risking the loss of my G5.

As Apple's market share grows, they become more and more Micro$oft-like. This certainly is not the hassle-free computing experience that Apple markets. What a disappointment! Maybe this is a sign to start migrating to Linux.

Success too!

Installation went OK on eMac, iMac (twice) and sucked on G4 with FastMac CPU upgrade. So, after reading this all. Did the following:

1 - tried to zap my PRAM; didn't succeed for unknown reason...
2 - hooked up an external modern DVD burner via FireWire and started installing from there: also BIG EXCLAMATION MARK plus failing BaseSystem
3 - removed all of my various non-original RAM (don't think I still have any original).
4 - Put back 1 by 1 a single RAM in the 1st bank per try and on the second try: PRESTO!

My best guess, can it be that it has something to do, with the more sensible RAM requirements now that Apple added memory randomization to Leopard.

[quote] They should say - back-up, remove all external drives, do a clean or archive and install and then do the DVD integrity check. It would have saved a bunch of problems for all concerned. [/quote]

I was pretty sure I read all that in the "Read before you install" file that pops up when you're about to do the install.....

Hi,

Target mode worked perfect for me.

Before today I didn't know what target mode was or how to use it.

I didn't understand what others were saying, regarding target mode, on this thread, so I played around with it and here is what I found.

The firewire symbol should be bouncing around on the machine you want to install leopard on.

The DVD should be in a machine that is working fine.

At a glance this seems counter intuitive, but it works perfectly.

The installer runs on your good system and installs to the system that the DVD failed to install on (in my case it failed on my old Dual 1.2GHZ MDD, that I still use and love everyday).

In another thread someone mentioned this as the reason you could skip the minimum required 800 MHZ machine. That statement was true and makes sense to me now, but it didn't when I read it before.

*_The machines:_*
-- "DVD machine" (This is the good machine you will put the Leopard Install DVD in.)
-- "Firewire machine" (This is the machines you will get the firewire symbol bouncing around on. This is the one you had trouble installing from the DVD on.)

*_Here are the steps:_*
1) Shut down the "firewire machine".
2) Plug your Firewire cable in to both computers (I bought a very nice gold 6pin to 6pin Firewire cable for $17.00 at Target)
3) Boot up the "firewire machine" holding the "t" key until you see a bouncing Firewire symbol.
4) Start the "DVD Machine" normally and when you get a desktop hold the "t" key down until you see the other machine mounted as an orange firewire disk.
5) Insert your Leopard DVD into the "DVD Machine" and you should see an OS X installer window come up.
6) Reboot (I clicked the install Leopard application in the window) but you could probably just reboot and hold the "c" key down.
7) Once booted to the DVD, the installer opens up (prompting you to continue).
8) Click continue and accept what the terms and agreements.
9) Follow the prompts until it asks you for the target disk to install on.
10) Select the disk on the "Firewire Machine" (again it should show up as a mounted orange firewire disk.)
11) The installer ran flawlessly for me after that.

It sounds like a LOT of steps but in reality it only took me about 10 minutes to get it going once I figured out the correct way to do it.

Hope this helps others...

PS:
For those of you who are angry or upset over this grab some food, get some rest, and remember stressing out and getting all huffy and puffy about this will make your task take even longer to accomplish.

It is only a computer and as much as apple designs stuff remarkably well... they aren't perfect all the time... keeping a clear head will get the job done much faster.

I had the same issue on my home machines. In my case I had a mix of Apple certified and non-Apple certified memory. I took out the offending RAM modules and was able to install thereafter. Hope this is helpful.

I started following this thread this afternoon after receiving a replacement disk from Apple Support since my first one was unreadable. Took quite a bit of time with tier 1 support over a 2 day period to convince them that I had tried every possible way of reading the disk on more than one machine. Once I got to speak to a product specialist (2nd day, +5 hours), it took 5 minutes to get the replacement ordered, which still hasn't shipped. Fortunately, the product specialist gave me his email address and after following up for status a few days later, he decided to ship me a new disk from an Apple Store. The product specialist was awesome, good followup. To bad it took so much time and a little bit of expression of my irritation to get to him. Now on to the installation. I tried all of the different scenarios prior to reading this thread, including burning the DVD to an image and imaging to a firewire drive, as well as using my Quicksilver 2002 in Target Disk Mode. Same package issues as everyone else. First it was the Base System package, then it was Additional Language Package. I tried installing with the same result even just selecting the essentials. Finally I turned my attention to the RAM. I had a GigaRAM 1GB DIMM in the top slot (hadn't even gotten to that point in the thread), so I removed it leaving only the 512 that the book came with and viola, the install ran all the way through with no problems. In fact, I did a complete install with all of the default options As this was a clean install from the outset and I had already cloned my system to a backup drive so there was no data loss. I logged into the system the first time, shut it back down reinstalled the 1GB DIMM and rebooted. I had one kernel panic (probably the change) so I reboot again and the system came up normally. So in the end, the first thing I suggest to anyone installing on an older system is to remove any RAM upgrades prior to installing and reinstall them once the OS is done. Also, I would strongly advise against an upgrade. In the 20 some odd years I been using computers, on Macs and Windows based PCs both personally and professionally, its never a good idea. Also, backup EVERYTHING before you do ANYTHING. The data you save may be your own. My post install experience with Leopard has been great. Stacks is livable with the grid view, but everything else is great. It joined my Windows 2003 AD domain on the first try. Found all of my PCs, Macs and my HP Laserjet 2605 JetDirect with no problem. I heard that connecting from Windows to Leopard is an issue, but as long as I can connect to Windows from Leopard, no big deal. Good luck to all. I apologize if I've been a tad wordy.

Yes, I did a pram reset.

And it looks like Apple are removing some posts. EG I'd said I had a valid disk, a valid machine, ram that had passed tests and the only thing I have wrong is 3rd party ram installed correctly by a certified vendor. and that post got removed.

Anyone found a fix if you don't have your original ram?