The Installer could not install some files in "/ HELP!!!

Welcome to the Apple boards:
First thing, run disk utility and repair HD and preferences.
Then reboot into safe mode (hold down shift on boot) and at login screen click restart - let computer restart in normal mode.
Now see if that helps. If not, post back.

Did you boot into the Safe mode as I suggested?
You have have a very corrupted HD.

Your drive may be damaged. Try a more powerful program like Disk Warrior and see if it helps. Otherwise, you may need the drive replaced.

I am also experiencing the same problems....very frustrating. I've looked everywhere, only to find this problem has no 'easy' solution as of yet, though I am also experiencing random shutdowns.

Bring it in to the Apple store. It seems to be a physical issue with the computer, probably the drive.

marc576 wrote:
I am also experiencing the same problems....very frustrating. I've looked everywhere, only to find this problem has no 'easy' solution as of yet, though I am also experiencing random shutdowns.

Is there any reason you are still running 10.5.0?

Sorry, i forgot to update my os. I am running 10.5.2, trying to get to 10.5.4, but I keep getting the installer error message.

I solved this situation.

See here

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1733098&tstart=0

Hey, follow the previous link. It worked exactly the same way for me.

Happy to see a solution was found. The posts reminded me to make a note to update my version of Disk Warrior. Time Capsule tends to obscure ones memory and I keep a drive with a basic version of OSX in another room. Can't restore to a bad hard drive.

Just curious. When you were troubleshooting, did you look around the root directory to see if you could see any files inside the hidden system directories? No specific file. If the installer could not find "/" could you?

I had this same error when installing Updates from Apple and using the FCS 2 install disc (and a 2nd error from the FCS 2 install disc--"Damaged media" error). I tried running a few times and always came back with the error messages.

So all I did was click on MacHD, select Get Info and change ALL of my Sharing & Permissions options to "Read & Write." I tried again and worked fine.

This is why I do not like 10.5, there are so many permission errors.

I also had this error on upgrading a g4 1.25 mhz iMac from 10.4.11 to Leopard 10.5.4. Repairing permissions seemed to fix it.

Admittedly I had problems earlier which is why I was trying an upgrade anyway. The imac froze and was coming up with a darwin terminal login prompt on boot. I first tried fsck from the single user command prompt and then disk utility run from my MBP with the G4 in target mode. Both reported the disk was fine no repairs necessary and I was able to get files off no problem.

Assuming I had a system corruption I tried an install of leopard to see if that would restore my Imac. However both upgrade and archive and install failed with the error the "installer couldn't install some files in /volumes/imac-125" and ironically "please contact the software manufacturer for assistance"!

What fixed it for me was to use disk utilities from the Leoprd installer disk and choose repair permissions. I noticed lots of permissions were repaired even though the 10.4 sytem disn't seem to find any problems
then I tried another install and touch wood with about 1 minute to go it seems fine.

So in case this helps anyone else try repairing permissions. If fsck or the 10.4 disk utility doesn't find any problems perhaps try with the Leopard disks?

Anyway I seem to have upgraded ok to Leopard and it boots now and runs so it worked for me