I recently acquired an ibook g3 466 se with a DVD drive. Unfortunately, whenever I try to load OS 10 off of a cd or DVD, the system crashes. To test the hard drive, I installed ubuntu and that worked fine. So why doesn't it boot with os 10? Please help me!!
Do I have to have os 9 on the hard disk to install osx? Also, I tried the pram and the open firmware password thing. Please help!
iBook, Other OS
Hello,
Which version of Mac OS X are you trying to install? Anything above 10.4.11 simply wont install on your iBook.
Check which disks your trying to install from, if they are gray disks then they are system specific. They wont install on your iBook either. You need a retail disk.
If you have installed Ubuntu, then you will need to format the hard drive and partition correctly before you can install Mac OS X.
No you shouldn't need Mac OS 9, but I would suggest applying the firmware update required for Mac OS X 10.2 and above first.
Thanks for replying Knucklesmac,
I tried to install OS 10.3 panther and OS 10.4 tiger only on the the system. I know leopard requires a g4 processor. They are both retail install disks. How can I apply the firmware update without an OS? How do I find out which version of firmware I have? It has 512 Mb of ram installed. Can I do an Apple hardware test?
I really need help here!
Hello,
It may not need the firmware updated depending on what it's current firmware is. The only way I know how to check that is system profiler which would require the instantiation of Mac OS X.
More information on the firmware can be found here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1284
Just to get an idea of what's happing, your inserting the Panther disk (DVD) into the drive and holding down the 'C' key during boot. At which point you should see the apple logo. Tell me, what happens? do you see the Apple logo or does the iBook restart?
I see the apple logo and the gear comes up for a second, but then the screen starts making weird patterns and the CD/DVD drive stops along with the hard drive. When booting in verbose mode, the system goes into a kernel panic.
hello,
If it has a Kernel Panic, then there has to be some hardware problem that maybe Ubuntu has not detected.
What I suggest is first resetting the PMU and then trying the installation again.
I think maybe the 512MB of memory could be at fault here. If you have a 256MB memory try replacing it and then start the install again. When you had Ubuntu installed, did the 512MB memory Plus the 64MB built-in (576MB) shown under system? Ubuntu may have just used the 64MB of memory.
I've had difficulty myself with a single stick of 512MB memory on a Clamshell. You would need to make sure the firmware has been updated to accept this upgrade.
If the new OS X being installed does not detect the 512MB, then it assumes you have 64MB and wont go any further with the installation. I've known it to hang on a blank screen after the Apple Logo when a module of memory has failed to initialize.
From what I recall, Mac OS X 10.3 requires a min 128MB memory to install.
Ok, well I tried to boot os 9 without the extra ram, but the same thing happened. I think the hard drive cable could be at fault here also. Have a spare one of those. When I type "boot cd:,\\txbi" to make it boot from the cd, it says cannot open cd. I know the drive can't be bad. Please help!
hello,
Well you don't need to boot in verbose mode.
The problem could only be that of the actual disks being used or the drive which is installed.
You say you have tried Mac OS 9, which version and are these the original iBook disks supplied with the iBook?
The retail copies you have of Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.4, are they both original disks or are they copied versions?
Have you tried booting the iBook using another macs drive and a FireWire cable in target disk mode?
Why won't ibook start off cd/DVD but crashes instead?
