Sounds like Snow Leopard is a major disaster

Chances are that your MBP has a problem that is preventing Snow Leopard from installing or working correctly, not that the OS has any inherent flaw preventing it from being the best one for MBP's (or any other Intel Mac) in general.

You can find out if either of the two most common problems that would cause this are affecting you as follows:

1. Run Disk Utility's Repair Disk procedure on the MBP's hard drive from the Snow Leopard installer disc. Any problem with the file system of the drive can & almost certainly will cause install problems, since it means the drive isn't writing the OS files correctly.

2. Run the Apple Hardware Test from the discs that came with your MBP in extended mode. It is not too uncommon for a hardware issue that goes unnoticed in normal use becomes very obvious when you try to upgrade the OS, especially marginal memory modules.

Three machines. One installed with no problems. Significant problems with other two, but both turned into beautiful installations once I found and tried some suggestions in these forums.

Now, three machines are rocking!

These forums are actually extremely useful. Just keep searching for suggestions related to the type of problem you are having.

There are problems that Apple should solve with 10.6.1 and later updates, but the real point for now is that this big Apple community is doing its job.

The only issue I had was with my eSata card causing Kernel Panics due to the non-compliant driver. Using FW800 until they fix it - but so far much snappier and TM backups are faster.

I would say the word "disaster" is a bit strong and inaccurate. I hardly ever come to these forums to report on things going well. 🙂

Maybe this will help: http://www.mactips.org/archives/2008/02/02/installing-leopard-with-an-external-h ard-disk/

I've had no problems with SL on any of my three macs. All my personal mac friends have had no issues other than what to do with all the free hard drive space.

The forums here are made for people who are having issues, so of course you'll see it condensed here.

I suppose you're right. It makes you wonder why some large developers don't have their software ready?

Kimberly Beattie1 wrote:
The only issue I had was with my eSata card causing Kernel Panics due to the non-compliant driver. Using FW800 until they fix it - but so far much snappier and TM backups are faster.

Kimberly,

Which eSATA card are you using? Is it a Silicon Image 3132? If so, there may be a work-around.

I've got a Sil3132-based Addonics eSATA controller ( http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/adsa3gpx1-2em.asp ). SL removed the driver for it during installation because it was "incompatible". However, I retrieved an older reference driver (v1.1.9) directly from Silicon Image ( http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=3 ), installed it, and that has me up and running. No kernel panics.

Please note that I have only one external drive plugged into the card -- which I use for TM backups. I've seen several postings of kernel panics with this chip/driver combination if both eSata ports are used at the same time.

I'm using this config for the time being until a dedicated SL-compatible driver is developed; or until I give up on a Sil3132 fix and go with a Marvell chip based eSATA card.

Hope this helps,
j0hn

I do not agree that this is a major disaster. After reading all the doom and gloom in this post I was really tense upgrading the 13 inch MBP; no problem. On to the 15 inch MBP which had some buggy things ; no problem and sorted out some of the previous bugs.

Then I read in a post here;"Now on to a 2008 Macbook Air - the wife's. If this one goes bad I'm in trouble" and LOL as I was leaving hers to the last. Not worthliving if this one crashed; no problem.

About 65 minutes for each one after making sure of back up and also repaired permissions.

So I am sorry some folks have challenges, mostly through incompatible software and I hope they get it sorted out, but not the "major disaster" that I was expecting.

R C-R,

That was it. I talked to the folks at Apple and got no answer the first time I called, and luckier the second time. It was, in fact, originally formatted with APM and not GUID. Installing now to see what works, what doesn't (e.g. eSATA connections)... Will keep my internal System drive on 10.5.8 for now. Thanks for the reply.

Jay S.

Slingplayer doesn't work for me... at least not remotely. Not the stand alone and not the web version. Thy say they are working on a solution. How did you get yours working?

No problems here. Had to update a few apps but otherwise smooth as silk.

Sorry, Eric, I'd forgotten I'd written that. The Slingplayer is *not working well for me after all, I spoke too soon. It did seem to work at first, but I didn't let it run long enough immediately after upgrading.

Sometime it freezes and disconnects after a couple of minutes, sometimes it will play for as long as a half an hour. But it always freezes and disconnects eventually. And the sling.com plug in doesn't work at all for me.

I have had luck using the Windows Slingplayer in a VMWare Fusion VM running Windows XP. So I'm not completely out of commission. I'm happy to hear they say they are working on a solution..

No disrespect, it may not be a disaster for Apple, or even for many SL upgraders, but it is a disaster to the person who has major problems. I had three backups of my Leopard system, which was working perfectly before the upgrade to SL. I did a fresh install, loaded the latest backup, and have had all kinds of problems since with applications crashing. MS Office, Acrobat Pro, Safari, Mail, iWeb, and others - all updated to the latest versions both prior to, and after, the upgrade to SL. My VMWare Fusion had problems, my Time Machine had problems, my network had problems, all my permissions were hosed - many issues.

I'm happy for everyone who had a trouble-free upgrade. I have had no problems at all with my wife's iMac or my MBP. But it has been a disaster for my Mac Pro upgrade. My machine is practically unusable for any of the applications I use daily. That's pretty much a disaster for me, since this is what I use to earn my living! After trying all the tricks mentioned here (font problems, deleting Word plist, turning off MobileMe, and so forth) none of the problems have been resolved.

This is like an emergency room full of people with problems, and not healthy people. But when an emergency room sees a lot of people all of a sudden with the same illness right after an event, they have to start thinking there is something bigger going on than just random people all getting sick at the same time!

After installing SL my iMac has been acting like a PC.......boots to desktop but nothing works. I have a mouse pointer but no amount of clicking does anything to any icon, the dock will not appear and I cannot restart or shutdown without turning the machine off. Usually after a complete shutdown the machine will work but this has happened several times. This iMac is only 1 year old.

ddhatfi wrote:
This is like an emergency room full of people with problems, and not healthy people. But when an emergency room sees a lot of people all of a sudden with the same illness right after an event, they have to start thinking there is something bigger going on than just random people all getting sick at the same time!

But at this emergency room, we aren't seeing a lot of Macs with the same illness. The symptoms are all over the map. For instance, there are not many reports of your "all kinds of problems." This implies that there is nothing unusual going on.

Please keep in mind that we see this pattern after every OS upgrade is released & far more often than not, the source of the problems can be traced to something other than the upgrade itself. For instance, it isn't that unusual for Mac Pro owners to have installed aftermarket graphics or other expansion slot cards that Apple doesn't support. It should not be too surprising that they can interfere with the installation of the new OS or cause instabilities because their drivers have not been updated. The same is true for added memory modules, some of which don't quite meet specs due to manufacturing defects or aging. It isn't that uncommon for those modules to work OK with one OS version but fail to do so with a later one that demands more from them.

Whatever the causes are for your problems, the fact that two of the three Macs you upgraded had no problems should be enough for you to consider the possibility that those causes are in the Mac that has them & not the upgrade itself.