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OS X reinstall. Use Leopard upgrade disc or original Panther restore discs?

Hi

I have a Power Mac G5 which has just recently started to refuse to boot other than in Safe Mode.

I have done Apple Hardware Test which claims everything should work, and reset NVRAM and PRAM. StartUp Items have been removed and my last option seems to be an OS X reinstall.

The machine was originally pre-installed with Panther and then upgraded to Tiger and then Leopard. My question is should I reinstall using the original tiger restore discs or will I be okay to use the Leopard upgrade discs.

Thinking of doing a full erase and install, but if an archive and install would perform just as well and retain my programs and settings then I would prefer to do that.

Any help or advice offered will be greatly appreciated.

PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 24, 2010 8:27 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 24, 2010 9:58 AM

If your data is not backed up, restore data to a hard drive before you resume*:

http://wwww.macmaps.com/backup.html

If you need Classic, erase and install from your 10.3 installer disc, and run these restore directions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61802

If you don't need Classic, install from the retail Tiger installer disc which looks like User uploaded file* and then apply the Leopard updater disc.

Once Leopard is installed, clone your hard drive to another (not the backup you just used).

Restoring from your backup should consist of first moving your non-preference user data except for bookmarks, addressbook, and e-mail, and then if any applications you install need a license code, find the Library -> Preferences file for those applications. But restore each one by one with a restart to ensure the application is compatible with Leopard. If it is, then update the clone.

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Sep 24, 2010 9:58 AM in response to Martin Lee1

If your data is not backed up, restore data to a hard drive before you resume*:

http://wwww.macmaps.com/backup.html

If you need Classic, erase and install from your 10.3 installer disc, and run these restore directions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61802

If you don't need Classic, install from the retail Tiger installer disc which looks like User uploaded file* and then apply the Leopard updater disc.

Once Leopard is installed, clone your hard drive to another (not the backup you just used).

Restoring from your backup should consist of first moving your non-preference user data except for bookmarks, addressbook, and e-mail, and then if any applications you install need a license code, find the Library -> Preferences file for those applications. But restore each one by one with a restart to ensure the application is compatible with Leopard. If it is, then update the clone.

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Sep 25, 2010 3:52 AM in response to Martin Lee1

+The machine was originally pre-installed with Panther and then upgraded to Tiger and then Leopard. My question is should I reinstall using the original tiger restore discs or will I be okay to use the Leopard upgrade discs.+

Ooops. Meant the original Panther restore discs or the Leopard upgrade discs.

Will try the Tiger upgrade disc as I don't need classic.

Sep 25, 2010 4:17 AM in response to a brody

When trying to install from the Tiger discs (and the original Panther restore discs as I tried those too) when it restarts to begin the install I just get the grey screen with the message that I need to restart the computer again. If I do that it tries to open from the Macintosh HD which doesn't work except in Safe Mode.

Or sometimes it just crashes, one time giving me a screen full of text and a kernel panic.

Not sure why it won't even let me restore from the original discs?

Shall I try the Leopard disc? Maybe it doesn't like me trying to revert it to an earlier version?

OS X reinstall. Use Leopard upgrade disc or original Panther restore discs?

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