Leopard Install Problems -Essentials Pkg - RAM issues

I'm regretting it as well. I had the same error message.

I was actually able to install Leopard successfully a week ago. Then my apps started crashing to the point where I couldn't open anything. When I tried to Archive & Install I got that msg. Same for Erase & Install. I wiped my drive & tried again - no luck. Finally I recreated the drive's partition and tried again and it worked. I never tried taking out my RAM.

The good news was that Time Machine made the recovery the most painless I've ever had. It just asked me when setting up OS X if I wanted to transfer my data from Time Machine, I said yes, and an hour or two later it was done.

But definitely the most painful install experience I've had. I just hope the pain is over.

I also have this problem installing on a MacBook.

I took out my 1GB 3rd party RAM stick and the install seems to be going fine. Like you said, it consistently failed around 20%. I'm now at 75% so here's hoping.

I wonder if there are a lot of people finding they can't upgrade if they have 3rd party RAM?

Thanks for the tip!

Yes my iMac ended up crashing again, and I couldn't install again, so I eventually took out my RAM and re-partitioned the drive, and one or the other of those got it to work.

I'm now wondering if its safe to put the RAM back in?

I am getting the same issue. DVD install worked fine on laptop but will not install on g5 2.7 GHZ. I have removed all non apple ram down to 1 GB. I am trying it again as I type this.
This is the worst apple OS install to date. I might have to look at selling off that stock I fear apple has hired some old Microsoft progamers to run the show over there.
Any help?

Yes mixed RAM is a big problem for OS 10.5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just realized that when the installation worked, I DIDN'T have the original Mac RAM installed. I have two 1GB Ultra modules. I took one out and the install worked.

Well, it claimed to work, throwing up a big green success checkmark and prompting to reboot. Problem is now I can't boot!

I get the white Apple screen with the spinning gear and that's it. I've left it for half an hour with no change.

I boot in to verbose mode and the last messages I see are

vmnet: Hub 1
vmnet: Port 0
vmnet: Port 1
Wed Nov 7 12:52.22 myhost.local kextd[10] <Notice>: writing kernel link data to /var/run/mach.sym
Wed Nov 7 12:52.56 configd[13] <Info>: NetBIOS name (multicast DNS) = myhost"

The vmnet is from VMWare Fusion setting up its virtual network interfaces. I wonder if that's what's taking it down?

VMWare croaking is a regular occurrence when doing Linux upgrades because it hooks in to the kernel. Upgrade the kernel and you need to at least update VMWare's kernel modules or likely recompile them if you have a very new kernel.

However when this happens, Linux just says "these kernel modules don't work with this kernel. Moving on..." and finishes booting. Then you update your VMWare and you're back in the game.

I really don't know how VMWare on OS X works but I hope this isn't the same problem. It'd be embarrassing to find OS X's boot process falls over more easily than the free public effort.

Anyway, I'm off with my own problem now. Now I'm looking in to removing VMWare via single user mode. I know there's a command line version of Installer.... hopefully it doesn't require a ton of frameworks to run...

Oh, and to put a call in to tech support (sigh.... i hate tech support)

About the RAM, are you planning on reinstalling your 1GB module? I'm back up and running and chugging away with 512MB RAM. I can barely work with it, but slow apps are better than crashing apps, so I'm scared to reinstall my 1GB module. I'm not sure if the RAM was just an issue during install and now it would be safe to renstall? Please...?

Well keeping in mind that I never got as far as you did... I did reinstall the extra module to see if it made any difference. It didn't.

A student here had a similar problem (the never-ending apple logo screen, not the failed install) and he said it was fixed by simply doing the install again.

So I'm doing the install again WITH the extra RAM module in and it appears to be working! It doesn't make sense to me either.

I haven't tried the original module yet. I'm sure its kicking around somewhere. If this install has the same problem, I'll dig up the original and try it.

Okay so the install didn't work again after all. However when I tried to eject the module from my MacBook using Apple's fancy eject lever, the RAM remained firmly in place. Argh. So now I'm doing the install again with the OTHER module removed and we'll see where that gets me. Also, I will do an Archive install in the hopes that this will solve my booting problem.

Hi! Just got mine to work. Same initial problem (on G4 Power Book in this case): 'Essentials' package.

- Failed 2-3 times
- Cleaned DVD a bit though I don't think that made a difference
- Did an Erase & Install but again don't think that made the difference (tried that each time)
- Deselected stuff I didn't want (Custom > Languages / Printer Drivers etc. / X11) to maximize my chances (2GBs of space saved with printer drivers alone of brands I know I won't use)

Key message is 'keeping on trying' might just do it (don't ask why but I saw the same in other blogs, that's what made me try again). Maybe try to maximize your chances by deselecting what you don't need (some users posted a specific language package was what crashed it). May also mean those thinking switching RAMs did it were just hitting their lucky repeat spot and it had nothing to do with the RAM.

If it fails go back to Tiger, I did that once as well without a problem in between, e.g. force shut by holding power, then try Apple - ALT - O - F while booting, takes you into open firmware interface, typing 'eject cd' will get it out for you, pop a new one in, type multi-boot and you'll get the choice of boot drives, which scarily enough was only the DVD most times. Reboot with 'C' might work also but not sure how you'd get the DVD out if you were stuck.

Good luck!

Could be true, but in my case the RAM is seeming more and more like the culprit. I also was able to get it through the install process without uninstalling the RAM by erase & installing, cleaning the DVD, etc., and really just trying it about 5 times. But after a couple days, the OS crashed again and I had to start over. From a week of pulling my hair out over this, it seems to me that the install process is a bit hit or miss, but maybe its a sign of some other problem that can come back to hurt you...in my case anyways.

Only now, after uninstalling the RAM and leaving it out, have I had any stability. Of course its only been a day - we'll see if it lasts.

I just tried reinstalling the RAM and booted up so I could test it. I used a memory testing program called Rember. Before I put the extra RAM module in, it passed. After, it failed.

So I'm off to my local Apple retailer tomorrow to replace what, with Tiger, seemed to be a perfectly good stick of memory. I can only hope the new stick will work...

Message was edited by: fancypants

Well, I got it installed, though it failed with the RAM in the 2nd slot (with the broken lever.) I gently extracted it and popped the module in to the first slot. Install worked fine. Installed the other module and have been running great since!

Archive and Install fixed my bootup freeze issue... I guess it was VMWare but I reinstalled it and its working fine.

So I'm left with the impression that there was an issue addressing my 2nd RAM slot since the install only ever worked when it was empty. I can't say for sure since I'm not really inclined to continue poking at it when its working again! 😉

Thanks for your help folks!

Well I'm going to give my memory another shot before I spend $100 for a new chip. I've switched out the slots like you did to see if that helps.

Everything seems fine so far, so hopefully it stays that way.

The only thing that makes me nervous is that running that program "Rember" gives me a failure when I have the 1GB chip installed. Have you tried running that program?

Hopefully the worst that happens is things start to go bad again and then I just remove the chip and get a new one...

I am having a VERY hard time believing that RAM that has worked fine for years can suddenly interfere with the installation of a new system.

I'm also running into the "cannot verify the essentials package" problem on my dual-CPU 2.0 GHz G5.

I think that it is far more likely that the problem is due to a bad (e.g., NULL) pointer dereference inside the installer program (i.e., a bug in the software) than it is to RAM that has suddenly gone bad.

When a program dereferences a bad pointer, it gets whatever random garbage happened to be in memory. When a system powers on, RAM contents are undefined and technically random. They can be different for different chips, but they usually don't change for the same chip.

So this could easily explain why pulling some of your memory allows the install to complete. It just may be that the undefined random garbage in the RAM you left in happens to allow the bug in Apple's software to not cause a crash.

Again, the problem is a bug in Apple's software, NOT a RAM failure even if the problem isn't always consistent, and even if changing RAM seems to make it go away.

I also got bit with the "Administrator I am also regretting being an early adopter of Leopard.downgraded to standard user" problem. I too should have stuck with Tiger and waited. Methinks maybe Apple has been spending too much attention on its iPhone toy and not enough on ensuring the quality of its existing products.

KA9Q wrote:

Again, the problem is a bug in Apple's software, NOT a RAM failure even if the problem isn't always consistent, and even if changing RAM seems to make it go away.

How can you be so sure? Did you work on the software? Your logic is totally illogical. You are saying, "don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up."