A lengthy problem with installing Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac (Please, for the love of Steve, HELP)

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A lengthy problem with installing Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac (Please, for the love of Steve, HELP)

I've done everything imaginable. Bootable installer, firewire connection from my MBP, formatting the hard drive, repairing and verifying this and that, zero-ing out data, N O T H I N G WORKS.

---A history of what I have done---

My optical drive (iMac) spits out my Snow Leopard disk. Okay, bad optical drive. Let's create a bootable installer from my MBP - reformat USB with a GUID partition and restore from the new "Install Mac OSX Snow Leopard" disc I bought. Cool. Seems to work fine. Pop the USB in my iMac and boot from installer. Great. Install starts to work, I'm on the edge of my seat. SIKE, JUST KIDDING.

Alright, lets firewire my MBP to iMac, boot in Target Disk Mode and try to use the optical drive to install that way. Nope. Same crash log.

The error log persistently starts crashing at "Child exited with status 11"

Alright, maybe something is corrupted in my system. Let's zero out the data and reformat the HD, repair, and verify. Same thing happens. Okay, maybe when I cleared my HD some things necessary for this install to work went missing. That brings me to now. I'm currently restoring the system back from Time Machine and starting from square one.

---I need assistance---

WHAT IS THE DEAL. One specialist I spoke to through apple support even recommended I search through reddit. He was a nice guy and understood, and I understand where he's coming from in the way of totally outdated technology. But still! All I'm trying to do is revive an old system! I'm here on my last limb. How in the world can I update my 10.5.8 OS to 10.6.0 with the stock install disk, bad optical drive, and specific crash log considering the troubleshooting I have already gone through. I'll post the detailed crash log if necessary. And follow up with any new progress made after my backup restores. Many thanks to whoever reads this and helps out.

iMac 20-Inch "Core 2 Duo" 2.66 (Early 2009)

Update: Restored the system, tried to install from a bootable disk of the dvd, crashed again, now I need to restore my whole system over again.

Posted on Nov 14, 2020 4:35 PM

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Answer 1

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Jumzilla Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2020 9:26 AM in response to HWTech

Alrighty I don’t need to do any of that because I figured it out. However I appreciate your help and support. I was unable to boot and install El Capitan on my machine so I went down to Yosemite. After creating a bootable installer with Yosemite and that not working I was definitely losing hope. I remembered I have an old cloned HDD of my MBP running 10.10.5, so what I did after I got my stock keyboard, was option boot from that disk to see if it would run okay on the iMac. It did. So okay the system I found wasn’t really the problem, maybe it’s the HD itself in the iMac. After working off my cloned HDD on my iMac I figured I could probably install Yosemite to my iMacs HD while working through my cloned HDD. Sure enough I gave it a try. After a few run throughs of not working because of hard disk failures, I repaired, verified, repeated the process of reformatting different ways, changed some security settings while reformatting, repair, verify, etc., all until the disk seemed to be okay to run the installer successfully. I got no error messages while doing this. But the installer did quit on me 3 times. I repeated my HD repair steps - and on the 4th time it was successful.

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Answer 2

HWTech

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55,874 points

Nov 15, 2020 8:14 PM in response to Jumzilla

A 2009 iMac can run up to macOS 10.11 El Capitan which is available to download outside of the App Store:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

I would recommend making the bootable macOS USB installer from the instructions in that link. Pay close attention to the information just below the 10.11 download link.

What version of macOS are you running when you restore from the backup?

Before you try to reinstall macOS again I suggest checking the health of the hard drive by running DriveDx and posting the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

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Answer 3

HWTech

Level 9

55,874 points

Nov 16, 2020 7:07 PM in response to Jumzilla

Have you made any hardware changes to this iMac?

Make sure to disconnect all unnecessary external devices.

If you have the retail version of OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD you can try creating a bootable OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard using the directions in this article (with newer versions of macOS the Disk Utility interface for this process is a bit different):

https://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html

If you still have problems, then try booting a Knoppix Linux USB drive on this iMac. You can use Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux) to create the bootable Knoppix USB drive from the downloaded Knoppix .iso file. Option Boot the Knoppix Linux USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". While Knoppix is booting the Mac may appear to be frozen on the boot picker menu so give Knoppix lots of time to finish booting.

If Knoppix boots to a desktop, then click on the "Start" menu icon on the lower left corner of the Taskbar and navigate the menus to "System Tools ---> GSmartControl". Within the GSmartControl app double-click on the iMac's hard drive icon to access the drive's health information. Post the complete health report here.

If you have your original OSX DVDs that shipped with this Mac, then run the Apple Hardware Test which is found on the 2nd DVD in the set.

You can also try testing the memory using Memtest86. You can use the downloaded Memtest .iso file as a source for Etcher to make a bootable Memtest86 USB drive. Option Boot the USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI".

You may also want to try using another electrical outlet just in case the one you are using is faulty. Also make sure the AC cord is firmly attached to the back of the iMac.

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Answer 4

Jumzilla Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 16, 2020 1:57 PM in response to HWTech

I'm running 10.5.8, I am unable to use the El Capitan bootable installer as it is not recognized as a bootable disk. Its an early 2009 iMac and does not possess recovery mode. I am unable to start my computer from the startup manager as I am working with a wireless Windows keyboard. Unsure if the problem is because it's wireless but using the (Alt) key does not work. I've reset my NVRAM, still nothing. I am unable to install DriveDX because it requires OS X 10.6+.

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Answer 5

Jumzilla Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 16, 2020 3:21 PM in response to HWTech

I've got my computer to recognize the bootable installer. Now when I try to boot from it I receive this error message -

panic(cpu 1 caller Oxffffff800f5ce6fa): Kernel trap at Oxffffff800f98270c, type CRO: Ox000000008001003b, CR2: Oxffffff7f8f9863313, CR3: Ox000000001173f000, CR4: RFIX : Ox000000000000002c, RBX: Ox0000000000000001, RCX : Oxffffff7f8f986288, RDX: RSP: Oxffffff80ab14ba20, RBP: Oxffffff80ab14bf60, RSI: Oxffffff801dlaf320, RDI: R8: Ox000000000000002d, R9: Ox0000000000000001, R10: Ox0000000000000018, R11: R12: OxffifffS01d18bec0, R13: OxffIfff801d175dc0, R14: Ox0000000000000012, R15: RFL: Ox0000000000010283, RIP: Oxfffiff800f98270c, CS: 0x0000000000000008, SS: Fault CR2: Oxfiffff7f8f9863313, Error code: Ox0000000000000000, Fault CPU: Oxl,

Debugger called: <panic> Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Rddress Oxffffff80abl4b6b0 : Oxffffff800f4dab52 Oxffifffalabl4b730 : Oxffffff800f5ce6fa Oxffifff80ab14b910 : Oxfffiff80015ec563 Oxffffff80abl4b930 : Oxffffff800f98270c Oxffffff80abl4bf60 : Oxfffiff800fa28701 Oxffffff80ab14bfb0 : Oxffffff800f5ecd66

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: launchd Boot args: container-dmg=file:///InstallZ200SX20)(7.20EMOCapltan.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg root-dig=file:ManmSystem.

14.page fault, registers: 0x0000000000002660 Oxffffff801d48e840 Oxffffff801ceae710 0x0000000000000202 Oxffifff801d177ba8 0x0000000000000010 PL: 0'

Mac OS version: 15G31

Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 15.6.0: Thu Jun 23 18:25:34 PDT 2016; Kernel UUID: B5RR8E3E-6586-3DOE-8678-8DCCF81E536C Kernel slide: Ox000000000f200000 Kernel text base: Oxfiffff800f400000 HIB text base: Oxffffff800f300000 System model name: iMac9,1 (Mac-F2218ER9) System uptime in nanoseconds: 44293660550

root:xnu-3248.60.10-1/RELERSE X86_64

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A lengthy problem with installing Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac (Please, for the love of Steve, HELP)

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