upgrading from 10.5 to 10.6

The laptop had a Kernel Panic which can be caused by a hardware issue or some third party installed software not being compatible.

Is the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD the full retail version or a DVD with a gray label? The gray label DVD is not for your laptop.

Is the DVD a manufactured factory version or one someone has burned to a DVD? If the latter, then purchase a real retail version of the DVD.

Other possibilities if you are using a good retail factory DVD:

• Optical drive is bad
• Hard drive is bad
• Bad memory or incompatible memory
• Bad Logic Board
• Compatibility issue with third party software (try updating the third party software, try booting into Safe Mode to allow you to finish the install and resolve the software issue)

That is the official download for Lion. The problem is most likely due to outdated certificates. Try changing the date to some time in 2017 and try running the installer again. If that still does not work, then try 2016, 2015, etc. I think 2017 will be fine though.

Now that you have upgraded to macOS 10.6, I would suggest checking the health of the hard drive by running DriveDx. If you are using a hard drive, then any "Warning" or "Failing" notices indicates a worn out or failing drive respectively. The latter means the drive should be replaced, while the former depends on exactly which health attribute is involved whether it is an issue. Feel free to post the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

bloke99 wrote:

Thanks. I will try that. Meanwhile, some sites have said that I can upgrade to 10.7.5 even though it says you cannot. Do you know if that might be possible?

The DriveDx report shows your laptop being a MBPro 2,2 which according to Mactracker & EveryMac.com is compatible with macOS 10.7.5 Lion.

And if possible, does 10.7.5 fix the vulnerability you mentioned?

No, the vulnerability in macOS 10.7.5 was never patched by Apple. Apple did patch the vulnerability in later versions of macOS such as 10.8. macOS 10.6 did not contain the vulnerability since we were still permitted to use 10.6.

The problem with 10.6.8 is that I cannot get any browser to work any more (firefox, safari etc.) as the older version conflicts with so many websites. I just get a warning that I need to upgrade but I cannot upgrade. Any idea on how to get a browser that fully works on 10.6.8?

You are not going to have any better luck with 10.7.5 either. Chromium based browsers require macOS 10.11+, while Firefox requires macOS 10.12+. Maybe someone has backported a browser to work with macOS 10.6, but I am not aware of any at the moment. A few years ago it was possible to use TenFourFox which was a backported version of Firefox for PPC (could run on macOS 10.6 Intel Macs using Rosetta), but the developer stopped development a few years ago so I doubt it would be of much use these days. Web browsers need constant updates and maintenance in order to keep up with the changing Internet so maintaining a customized backport is a time consuming chore so very few people actually have hardware, or the time and knowledge to do it.

Are you just trying to keep this old laptop running to access the Internet or do you need to use some old macOS apps that are no longer available for later versions of macOS? If you just want to keep using this laptop for as long as possible to access the Internet, then you may want to consider installing Linux Mint to it assuming the laptop has at least 2GB of memory (4GB is best, but this laptop is only capable of accessing at most 3GB). This would give you a non-Apple OS which is current and can use the current versions of the popular browsers (Firefox, Google Chrome, Vivaldi, and others) as well as access to free open source apps such as LibreOffice. However, Linux is not for everyone and it requires you to learn a new OS. Most commercial apps are not available for Linux so you would need to utilize free open source alternatives.

Laptops this old with such limited resources really are not very useful except as a curious piece of history or if you have some old app that not supported with later systems. I like keeping old systems alive, but at some point they are just no longer useful. Until a few years ago I was still using a 32bit only laptop for web browsing and basic stuff, but I ended up finally retiring it once the web browsers stopped supporting 32 bit systems. I really miss that laptop as it was much nicer than most of the current laptops and it only had 2GB of memory (I had ripped out all of automated stuff from the OS which bloated the OS so once booted the laptop was only consuming 70MB of RAM which allowed the browser to use most of the 2GB.

Yes. After you upgrade the OS, then you can change the date back to the current date.

No, the hardware has its own limitations. It is doubtful you could get a USB Bluetooth device which would be compatible with such an old OS. You would have better luck with Linux using a Bluetooth device, but you would need to make sure it is compatible with Linux which can sometimes be hard to confirm since most hardware manufactures won't mention Linux at all even if the device works (or can be made to work).

Linux would definitely work well for your wife's use cases (not sure about the Bluetooth support though) depending on the amount of memory the laptop has. I did test Linux on a 2009 Macbook which had just 2GB of memory and I could use a web browser with at least two tabs open and the experience was satisfactory. I didn't have time (or don't recall) how much free memory was left available during the test.

I haven't seen anyone post any information about browsers for such an old version of macOS in several years so I don't know if there are any options out there these days after the developer stopped supporting TenFourFox several years ago. Found this forum post on MacRumours with a list of some older browsers. I have no experience with them so do your own research to assess the risk factors (some on the list are no longer supported).

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/web-browsers-for-early-intel-macs.2280783/

The hard drive looks good. The only thing that is wearing out on it is the "Load Cycle Count" which is at 59%. When this gets to (or nears) 1%, then you may start seeing performance issues or other odd intermittent issues. The Load Cycle Count wear is caused by sleeping & waking the drive. I know later versions of macOS tend to be very aggressive with this and cause premature drive wear & failure. I don't recall how macOS 10.6 or 10.7 behaved in this regard. The drive does have over 8K hours on it which is a lot for a 2.5" laptop drive, but isn't a concern at the moment since it appears it has been well cared for as there are no other apparent issues.

Try booting into Safe Mode and running the installer with the older date configured. You may have some third party software installed that is interfering with the normal operation of macOS.

You appear to have a MacBook Pro 2,2 model which according to EveryMac.com does support macOS 10.7 Lion and is the last supported version of macOS for this laptop. Except for being able to update the system firmware to possibly allow more memory, I personally would stick with macOS 10.6. macOS 10.6 allows you to use PPC apps which until a few years ago allowed for running a backported version of Firefox in order to access the Internet, but that app was discontinued a couple years ago. Plus macOS 10.7 has a known unpatched vulnerability when connected to the Internet. I don't recall the details, but only remember we were forbidden by our organization to ever use macOS 10.7 Lion ever again due to this vulnerability.