Mac Pro not booting from CD's using 'C'

8800GT "requires 10.5.2 (or later)"

Disk Warrior: I never boot from their CD, set up an emergency boot partition somewhere like on FW drive. It has 10.4.9.

Maybe when you ordered the 8800, didn't see some of the +fine print.+
If your Leopard Disk is earlier than 10.5.2 you can't boot from it 😟

Ditto. My MP won't boot off the server disk. It reads the disk once I've logged in but when I try to boot to it I get the windowshade and instructions in several languages to shut off my computer. I haven't tried booting other disks but it does read other disks, new and old, shrinkwrapped and scratched.

Superdrive == OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A.

Another bit of info: Get Info shows the installer on my Server install disk dated Sept 23 2007, and the version to be 10.5 (nothing in the second decimal position.) Although create/modify dates can be easily manipulated, and although I don't know if the date refers to the installer or to the OS itself, the copyright date on the face of the disk is 2007. That suggests that this is 10.5.0 or thereabouts.

The version that came installed is 10.5.4 but as was pointed out that was almost certainly applied via imaging.

I don't remember: is there a way to make an install disk off of an existing installation of OS X?

Disk Warrior isn't suppose to be able to boot a 2008 Mac Pro - at all.

I think we ran into a similar problem in 10.3.x with G5s and Nvidia 6600, but then there was a means to modify a boot disk. In this case, I think 10.5.3 or something should be included with 8800s.

Clone a working 10.5.4 disk. You can't get here from there I understand.

Could you boot from OEM or Leopard DVD previously with the 8800 though?

I just got off the phone to Apple support. They passed me to Enterprise support who suggested the solution described below. Enterprise support said the core problem is that the server install disk is 10.5.0. They may or may not produce a more current one for Leopard.

I tested this procedure and it works.
1) Use the Mac Pro Client install disk that shipped with your Mac Pro to erase the installation you want to remove, and install the Leopard client.

2) After a successful install, log in to the client, insert your server install disk and double-click to start the install. Instead of producing a screen with a "Restart" button, it produces a screen with an "Install" button.

3) After a successful install of the server, but before rebooting, use Software Update to install just the 10.5.4 all-in-one update. Come back later for the other updates.

You may not have to take such care in step 3, but I did.

Final note: the client install recognized my wireless mouse early in the setup, but somewhere in the server install the OS lost track of it and I had to plug in a USB mouse.

Recently, I bought diskwarrior but it doesn't boot. I tried the Leopard install to test it out. That doesn't work, then I called Alsof and they said it should boot on my current system.

DiskWarrior will not boot on a Mac Pro (Early 2008).
"All Mac models meeting the system requirements for DiskWarrior *except the new Mac Pro and Xserve models introduced on 01/08/2008, the MacBook Air introduced on 01/15/2008, the MacBook/MacBook Pro models introduced on 02/26/2008 and the iMac models introduced on 04/28/2008* can be started from the CD."
<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html>
If you want to use DiskWarrior, you need to put it on another drive or partition containing OSX 10.5.4

Therefore, all of sudden nothing boots. Like I said, the only change I did was to replace the video card.

That's why the Leopard DVD won't boot. The Leopard DVD that came with the computer doesn't have drivers for the new graphics card. If you still have the old card, install it, install Leopard, update to 10.5.4, then put in the new graphics card.

Just had the same problem - could not boot from the Leopard disc to re-install system. My MacPro has both an 8800GT and the original Radeon 9600 in it. Took out the 8800GT and tried again, and the MacPro started up fine with just the 9600 fitted. Will have to re-install 10.5, then run software update, then put the 8800 back in.

Good job I found these posts. Thank you.