Is this situation hopeless?

Question

Is this situation hopeless?

My daughter gave me her old Macbook with OS 10.6 installed. She hadn't used it in quite a while and couldn't remember the password she'd used for it. She suggested that I just reformat the disk while booted off the system CD and erase the disk.

I did that. But when I tried to install the system software while booted up from the CD, a message on screen told me, "OSX cannot be installed on this computer" (or something like that).

Wha????

Since that time, I've tried to figure out other ways go get system software onto the laptop, with no success. I can't even find a way to UNerase the files that were on there. I've booted off both the OSX 10.6 system CD and DiskWarrior. Each time, the newly-formatted HD shows up but, checking the data about it, I see that there is no "owner" ... and that there are no "package" files ....

So is this laptop recoverable in any way or should I just take to the recycling bin now?

Posted on Jan 30, 2015 11:30 AM

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Answer 1

Japib

Level 4

2,843 points

Jan 30, 2015 11:36 AM in response to KatieOConnell

the laptop should be recoverable, it's a software error, so there's always a way to fix. And even if you can't manage to install on the drive, you always have the option to get the disk out of the mac, buy a 50$ disk, install it and install OS X on it.

Try following these instructions: Installer reports "OS X could not be installed on your computer" or "This disk cannot be used to start up your computer"…

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Answer 2

Jan 30, 2015 12:26 PM in response to Japib

Unfortunately, this ultimately didn't help since partitioning isn't an option for me. Don't know if that's because I'm using a laptop or because the system CD from which I'm booting is Leopard. At any rate, thanks again for trying.

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Answer 3

Feb 12, 2015 7:09 AM in response to KatieOConnell

Follow-Up: I was able to get the original Snow Leopard disks from my daughter and that solved everything.

As it turned out, I was trying to install OS 10.6 from a disk that came with my desktop computer. Apparently, this will never work. Laptops have their own special files and must be installed from a OS for Laptop computer.

Now I know!

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Answer 4

spudnuty

Level 5

7,128 points

Feb 12, 2015 2:20 PM in response to KatieOConnell

Often that original installer disk was 10.6.3

" the system CD from which I'm booting is Leopard"

Leopard is going to be 10.5 so that's not going to work.

Even the retail version of Snow Leopard won't work because it's 10.6.0.

Glad you got it working and it "should I just take to the recycling bin now?" didn't wind up in the bin.

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