Question about installing Snow Leopard on a Mac Mini

Question

Question about installing Snow Leopard on a Mac Mini

I'm in the process of installing Snow Leopard on a Mac Mini, but it's taking forever. It's been installing for well over 2 hours now and still indicates an hour left to install. Is this unusual? I'm getting a little concerned. What do I do if I have to cancel the install? Do I have to start from scratch again?

mac mini, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on May 25, 2010 4:56 PM

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Answer 1

May 25, 2010 6:04 PM in response to Richard Skover1

Now I have a real problem. After the install the screen went black and stayed that way for 15 minutes. I turned off the computer and restarted- the computer boots only off the Snow Leopard dvd. Now I have a mini mac with a Snow Leopard dvd stuck in it and the internal drive does not show up in the startup disk window. Where do I go from here?

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Answer 2

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 25, 2010 10:15 PM in response to Richard Skover1

Restore the bootable backup/clone or Time Machine backup you make prior to trying to install SL or reinstall SL.

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Answer 3

May 26, 2010 8:02 AM in response to baltwo

Thanks for the reply. Before I received your message I got frustrated and decided to install the original system that came with the Mac Mini (to get the computer running again)- I believe it's Leopard 10.5.8. That seemed to work but it looks like many items were put into a Recovered Items Folder- applications folder, library folder and system folder . None of my Adobe Apps work now so I have to reinstall them. I think I will stay away from Snow Leopard for awhile. Can I delete all of the items from the Recovered Items Folder without affecting the computer? What do I do to get everything back the way it was before I tried to install Snow Leopard. With everything I read, Snow Leopard was supposed to be an easy install

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Answer 4

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,478 points

May 26, 2010 8:29 AM in response to Richard Skover1

Richard,

You mentioned you were running 10.5.8 before attempting your upgrade. Was 10.5.8 running OK or were you trying to fix some other issue by upgrading to SL? The reason I ask is I see numerous people posting they are having troubles with an upgrade when they are really just trying to fix another problem. Normally doing an OS upgrade does not fix another problem, in most cases it just makes the original issue worse.

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Answer 5

May 26, 2010 8:42 AM in response to rkaufmann87

System 10.5.8 was running beautifully with no problems. Not quite sure where to go from here.

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Answer 6

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,478 points

May 26, 2010 8:45 AM in response to Richard Skover1

How is 10.5.8 now, still running OK? If it is I'd recommend re-attempting the SL upgrade.

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Answer 7

May 26, 2010 9:39 AM in response to rkaufmann87

10.5.8 seems to running well right now. I'm sure nervous about doing this again. It was a total of six hours between when I started to install Snow Leopard and when I finally got the computer going again with 10.5.8. Is there a certain procedure to installing Snow Leopard that I missed- and what do I do with the 16.48 Gig of stuff in the recovered items folder? Does it normally take 3 hours to install Snow Leopard? The DVD drive seemed to be making more vibrating noise than usual- it did also with the Leopard 10.5.8 disk.

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Answer 8

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,478 points

May 26, 2010 9:50 AM in response to Richard Skover1

The upgrade shouldn't take that 3 hours and if you follow the instructions that came with SL it should go smoothly.

Regarding the recovered items folder, leave it alone for now and just re-attempt the upgrade. As a general rule before any major upgrade it's not a bad idea to Repair Permissions (it's in Disk Utility) before and after the upgrade and ALWAYS have a good back up before starting the upgrade.

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Answer 9

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 26, 2010 10:27 AM in response to Richard Skover1

Before doing anything WRT Snow Leopard, prepare a bootable backup/clone using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! onto an external FireWire HD and ensure it works like the original. Then, and only then, upgrade either one to Snow Leopard. That gives the ability to revert back to the good and stable Leopard installation. AFAIK, WRT *Recovered Items Folder*, I've never heard of such a thing. Doesn't make any sense to me. Did you wipe the machine clean before installing from the mini's install disc? If not, which install option did you elect to do? Was it Archive & Install? If so, then there should be a Previous System Folder, but not a Recovered Items Folder.

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Answer 10

May 27, 2010 9:07 AM in response to baltwo

I was so frustrated that the computer wasn't working after 3 hours that I did just a basic install from the 10.5.8 disk. I wasn't sure if there was anything left on the drive when the upgrade failed. I did have everything backed up on an external firewire drive that seems to run well using CCC. Can I clone from the external drive to the internal drive with CCC? Would you suggest doing something like that at this point or should I wipe the internal drive and start over?

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Answer 11

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

May 27, 2010 10:42 AM in response to Richard Skover1

How about this:

1. If necessary start up from the external HD & verify that everything is working right & all your files are intact on it.

2. Clone from the external to internal HD.

3. Start up from the internal HD & verify as in #1 that everything works as expected.

4. Install Snow Leopard on the external HD. If that completes successfully, restart from it & verify as above.

5.a. If that all checks out, clone the external back to the internal HD & you are done.

5.b. If that fails, you still have the internal HD with your working copy of 10.5.8 to use while you try to figure out what is going wrong.

The main benefit of this is you always have one working installation to fall back on no matter what happens.

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Answer 12

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 27, 2010 11:12 AM in response to Richard Skover1

As RC -R stated, erase the internal and clone the clone to it.

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Answer 13

May 27, 2010 12:19 PM in response to R C-R

Thank you very much for the help. I will give this a try. Just one last quick question. I noticed a thread in this category with the topic "10.6.3 Problems!" with over 16,000 hits. Are these problems with System 10.6.3 right out of the box, or problems from updating to 10.6.3 from earlier versions. I would hate to have the problems they are having.

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Answer 14

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 27, 2010 12:30 PM in response to Richard Skover1

All that indicates is that many looked at the thread to see if there was anything to it. Review it and see what others are saying. IMO, this is Apple's ER, so all you'll normally find are people with problems. Given there are only a couple of hundred posts to that thread, doesn't seem to be an epidemic going on.

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