Installing Snow Leopard on an Older iMac - Installer won't restart

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Installing Snow Leopard on an Older iMac - Installer won't restart

Hi - I have an older 2008 iMac running that was reset to factory settings; This morning I'm trying to upgrade it back up to El Capitan (last OS I had on it once) and I downloaded a Snow Leopard full upgrade 10.6.8.dmg file and figured I would go from there.

I start up the installation, it reboots and next I'm expecting to see the Language Selection menu but nothing happens, it just quits. I've attempted with multiple images and with a 10.5 update, but same story.

The iMac is an Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and plenty of room on the hard drive since it was wiped clean. Thoughts??

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Feb 23, 2020 5:02 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 23, 2020 5:40 AM in response to rulAli

Assuming Internet Recovery very works on this old Mac (I'm not sure myself):

Reboot holding down Command-Alt-R to go into Internet Recovery
Install OSX from the menu shown
Once installed, go to https://itunes.apple.com/app/os-x-el-capitan/id1147835434?mt=12 to upgrade to El Capitan.

Good luck

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Answer 2

rulAli Author

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8 points

Feb 23, 2020 9:32 AM in response to The_Knowledge_Seeker

Fixed! Holding down the Option key took me into Recovery, from there I did an Internet restore to Maverick on my external HD. not sure why Command + R didn't get the job done, would've saved me days of frustration :)

Thanks for trying help!

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Answer 3

rulAli Author

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Feb 23, 2020 6:03 AM in response to The_Knowledge_Seeker

Thank you for your reply! I've tried rebooting in Recovery Mode several times and command-alt-R (or Just Command-R, or slamming the keyboard in frustration) doesn't seem to work, not sure if this is a 10.4 issue since it works fine on my Macbook running Catalina. Command + S seems to pull up a terminal menu, not sure if there's a magic command I type from there to go into Recovery?

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Answer 4

Feb 23, 2020 6:22 AM in response to rulAli

Thank you for your reply! I've tried rebooting in Recovery Mode several times and command-alt-R (or Just Command-R, or slamming the keyboard in frustration) doesn't seem to work, not sure if this is a 10.4 issue since it works fine on my Macbook running Catalina.

It might just be that your Mac is too old for Internet Recovery to work :-(

Command + S seems to pull up a terminal menu, not sure if there's a magic command I type from there to go into Recovery?

That's Single User Mode. I don't think you can boot into Recovery mode from there anyway.

Have you got the original DVD installers? You might be able to install OSX with those.

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Installing Snow Leopard on an Older iMac - Installer won't restart

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