Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer

Im planning to buy the retail version but i dont know w/c one. My macbook original OS was 10.4. what should i buy? Thanks.

It depends on what the Mac's hardware is. Go to the Apple in the upper left and choose About This Mac. Where it says "Processor", if it is any type of Intel chip, you can purchase the retail 10.6.3 Snow Leopard disk. You must first upgrade to SL before you can move forward to Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks. If it says G4 or G5, then you cannot upgrade the OS past 10.5.8.

See if this helps:

Drive Partition and Format

1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive.

I remember having a problem like this a few years in the past, and I solved it by formatting the hard drive using a Gparted live CD I had handy. Chose the HFS+ format in Gparted, applied changes, rebooted, and voilà. Could have something to do with the GUID on the drive being corrupted or unreadable.

Do you have a restore partition on this drive (due to a prior installation of, say, Lion or a more recent version of OS X)? It could prevent you from downgrading to an older version of the OS. Plus, when you say you zeroed out the drive, it may mean you actually deleted the MacintoshHD startup volume, not the whole disk.

OK, so once you access Disk Utility, can you select your hard drive (not the startup volume that should be right under it, the drive itself) and format/erase it? From what you describe, it seems the drive GUID is unreadable or corrupted, and OS X shows it can't install on it. The best way to solve the issue would be to completely overwrite what's on the drive, and install anew.

Of course, at this point, you're sure the DVD you're trying to install from is either the one that originally came with this particular Mac, or a retail DVD?

Did you upgrade this MacBook Pro since you bought it? New hard drive, more RAM, a different logic board (there are several threads on this forum about people experiencing repetitive kernel panics due to a combination of faulty logic boards and GPUs), etc...?

Additionally, did you create a new partition while in Disk Utility, as Mac OS extended (journaled) on a GUID Partition Table volume? On a clean drive, that's mandatory for Snow Leopard.

Hi, I have the same problem here. tried everything that you've posted but my biggest problem is that I dont have the original installation dvd that comes with this mac. Borrowed an installation dvd from a friend. Need help. Thanks

Hello all,

I'm having this exact problem with an iMac 27" mid-2010 machine that came with OS X 10.6.4 gray DVDs. I have tried everything mentioned here in this post and I still get the error message "Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer". I have 15 of these exact machines, with one being the problem machine. I have all the original DVDs with these machines, so I know that I'm using what came with the machines. I've tried using a GParted Live CD as well with the same results. At that point I don't know what else to try.

Here is some background information: The original Hitachi 2TB HDD in this machine died, so I installed a 250GB Western Digital HDD I had laying around. The WD 250GB drive is the one I receive the error with when trying to install the OS. Just out of curiousity, I booted the iMac off of a Windows 8.1 DVD and went through the full clean install process and actually installed Windows 8.1 x64 on this iMac and it worked fine. I was even surfing the Intenet through the built in WiFi. Now, I will admit that I'm new to Apple equipment, as I primarily work on PC based equipment. So please don't hold this against me, I'm trying to learn more about Apple equipment. My biggest question is "Do the OEM gray DVDs have to be used with the exact same type of HDD in order for the installer to work right?" I keep reading information about the gray DVDs being "bound" to the specific model of machine they were shipped with. I find it hard to believe that the Mac Installer won't install just because of size difference in the HDD. I know that 250GB is plenty big for the requirements of OS X 10.6.4, which is what the machines came with. Any help someone can offer is most appreciated.

Oh, by the way this is my first post on the Apple forums, so go lightly on me as I'm a newbie. :-)

Oh, I forgot to mention that the WD 250 GB HDD that I'm trying to use is a Model WD2500AAJS which is suppose to be compatible with Apple.

Another thing that has me stumped, how does an iMac know how to located the files to start the boot process for the OS? In the PC world you must have a partition that is marked "Active" or it can't start the boot process for the OS. Again, I installed Windows 8.1 using traditional HDD preparation methods and it works fine in this iMac, so why is it that when I try to install the Mac OS X the error keeps popping up? Oh, I did go back through the Disk Utility in the Mac Installer and deleted the Windows partitions, zeroed the drive out and created the appropriate partition for what Apple wants when using an Intel Based Mac. Please don't think that I'm still trying to use the Windows partitions.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the WD 250 GB HDD that I'm trying to use is a Model WD2500AAJS which is suppose to be compatible with Apple.

Any hard drive is compatible. You just need to reformat them for the Mac.

Another thing that has me stumped, how does an iMac know how to located the files to start the boot process for the OS? In the PC world you must have a partition that is marked "Active" or it can't start the boot process for the OS.

Any partition can be bootable. It doesn't need a special designation as Windows/DOS does. The firmware keeps track of that. If it sees a valid OS, you can choose it as a startup disk. Which one (of pretty much as many as you want) is the default startup disk is chosen in the System Preferences. That information is saved in the EFI.

Again, I installed Windows 8.1 using traditional HDD preparation methods and it works fine in this iMac, so why is it that when I try to install the Mac OS X the error keeps popping up?

Sounds like you may have missed one requirement. Not only does the partition need to be Mac OS Extended, but the drive's partition map must be GUID. That can only be done when partitioning the drive. Which means if it isn't GUID now, the only way to fix it is to repartition the drive, which will destroy any data currently on the drive.