My HD died on my iMac. I replaced it and lost everything that was on it. I found my source disks from my original purchase for Final Cut Express HD 3.5. I now have Maverick ISO and it will not let me load my software so I can continue my film work. ???

Can you access a Snow Leopard OS disc and load that on another drive to dual boot?

It's unlikely that 3.5 and Mavericks will work tobgether.

That would be one simple way to work around the issue.

Al

Al has already hinted that the only way you may be able to use Final Cut Express on your current Mac, would be to install Snow Leopard + Final Cut Express on an external hard drive and boot from the external hard drive. But that might not be possible if your Mac originally came with Lion or later verson of OS X pre-installed. Exactly what model Mac are you using ... and do you know what version of OS X came pre-installed in it/

Final Cut Express 3.5 was discontinued in favor of Final Cut Express 4 back in 2007, and all versions of Final Cut Express were end-of-lifed in June 2011; it is no longer supported software. Final Cut Pro X is the current version, but unfortunately there is almost no way to migrate FCE projects to FCPX. (You can reuse all your source media files, just not your FCE projects (edits).

Some users have been able to install & run FCE 4/4.01 on Lion and later releases of OS X but experience has been spotty. It is unlikely that FCE 3.5 or even FCE 4 will install and run properly on Mavericks.

1) Partition your hard drive or add an external drive and install Snow Leopard (with the Optional Rosetta) into it and then you can dual-boot (System Preferences:Startup Disk) into Snow Leopard and run FCE 3.5 there.

2) Use one of the following methods to install FCE 3.5 into Mavericks:

a) Pacifist: http://www.charlessoft.com/

b) Jeremy Johnstone's Terminal method: http://www.jeremyjohnstone.com/blog/2012-03-11-installing-final-cut-pro-studio-2 -0-on-mac-os-x-10-7-lion.html

Reports on this forum seem to confirm that Final Cut Studio 2 will continue to operate in Mavericks once it is functionally installed, albeit some plug-ins may fail to function. FCE 3.5 is the same generation as FCS2, and presumably will continue to operate in Mavericks, as well.