MacBook 10.5.8 keeps rebooting

New hard drive. I am temporarily using an external hard drive with my OS on there.

So try safe mode?

Well I got Disk Utilities to work and it said everything is fine. Will try again.

But the old drive never bothered using the external. If it helps I will go in and disconnect.

Trying to avoid that if possible. Did a checksum and Verify and nothing has changed.

It will not boot in safe mode.

Any other option before having to reformat?

...Videos of a theater production i was technical producer, designer and was LD. It was from last week and there are no copies, just was about to dump them for storage.

So if there are other routes awesome, if not I will have to kiss them good bye and let memories be my archive.

Got a new hard drive, and made it my new OS, in the process of installing all my original apps i had on there; it started doing the reboot loop.

I had to dump the video files from my phone on to the computer, hence why those are on there.

Reinstall from the disc? You sure that won't erase my data? Thought that was the same procedure as a reformat.

I am at 10.5.8 and my disc is for 10.5.1. So couldn't that cause problems?

Totally for it if that won't totally kill me data.

Yup, it was that simple! Thanks. Found the problem area as soon as it booted.