tried to install snow leopard over 10.5.8 but it failed and restarted now i cant boot 10.5.8

I think the default behaviour of the 10.6 installer is to upgrade, meaning your files are normally left in place and the system files are overwritten. I believe you have to erase the disk to 'clean install'. This is different from earlier OS's & I may have my versions mixed up (so this could be wrong). This page seems to suggest that you may have done an upgrade install…

http://macs.about.com/od/snowleopardmacosx106/ss/upgradeinstall.htm#step3

Sometimes the installer goes wrong and wants you to create a new admin account. I'd suggest you consider performing the setup steps that create an admin account, after that try logging in to your old account. If that fails to login confirm the old home folder is still inside /Users. Also check if the user is in the Accounts within System Preferences. The setup process creates a new user, sets the computer name & basic network settings etc. Be sure to use a user name that is different to any on the Mac, you don't want to conflict.

If you have no backup you should make one first.

A backup can be made in Disk Utility when booted in the installer via the recovery tab. Please ask if you want help backing up, it will need an external disk to copy onto - this will be overwritten so don't have important files on it.

If you are sure you can see the files the disk should be OK but any changes to a disk during setup risk losing data if you have no backup and the original files were actually deleted.

Please explain how you saw the files in Disk Utility, is it just from the number of files figure or did you browse to them or something else?

Installing Snow Leopard will not delete your files - Drew is correct.

Installing or updating Snow Leopard:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Snow_Leopard_Installation_Instructions.pdf

VitaBlu wrote:

well, it just shows the exact amount of space it had before installation, 4.00 GB left out of 160 GB on hard drive, and show the amount of files still on there. now when the installer failed , it failed in the beginning, i just cant boot of the hard drive anymore, the only way i can actually use the computer is by booting off installer. then again i don't know much about mac

No wonder it failed to install. 4GB of free space is tiny!

OS X needs disk space when booting normally for temporary files & other data. I'd recommend leaving around at least 15-20GB free at all times, more free space will help performance on these older Macs. Apple don't seem to state how much you need free, so there is no hard figure - it depends on how you use the Mac, how much RAM you have etc…

When you install many files will be overwritten, but I suspect some may also be moved before overwriting (some items need to be upgraded to new versions etc), that takes more space. The installer should have warned you, but apparently it didn't.

I don't know how you can best get out of this predicament - normally recovery is by using a backup that was taken before the upgrade was attempted, but you don't appear to have one? It is unclear how the OS is damaged, it should boot by selecting it in the boot picker if it is in good working order – hold option at startup (a.k.a. alt).

You can backup this disk in Disk Utility to keep a copy of the data. Do that inside the installer - Disk Utility is available there.

You use the 'restore' tab.

Select the internal disk as the source & an external disk as the destination.

The destination will probably be overwritten so do not have any data that you need on that disk. Ask if you need this explaining. It's probably more difficult to explain than do 🙂

Once you have a backup it may be easiest to erase the internal disk & perform a clean install of OS X 10.6. Then you can migrate data back to this Mac from the backup copy via Apple's built in tools. You will have to leave behind some of it because there is simply not enough free disk space to have a reliable OS. The tools to 'migrate' only give you some basic choices…

Migration/ Setup Assistant allow you these choices…

Copy all Applications & supporting data

Copy users (you can choose which ones)

Copy All other data & settings (normally files you added at the base of the disk, setting are often easy to recreate).

The Applications are what I would leave behind, because they can be incompatible are not always needed, but you do have to reinstall all the ones you require.

P.S. Thanks for clarify Klaus1 🙂

Get a blank external drive, then boot off the DVD and open Disk Utility. Try using Disk Utility/Restore to copy the backup to a new location. Please note that this will reformat the destination partition.

When that is done, Disk Utility Verify/Repair Disk and Repair Permissions until you get no errors. Reformat the drive using Disk Utility/Erase Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then click the Option button and select GUID. Then re-install the OS.

If successful, copy your data back from the external drive.

Clarification question - what OS do you want to end up with? You can try reinstalling Leopard if you don't want to upgrade.

Sorry it is difficult to know how far the installer got so I can't say what the issue is. We don't have any info on the error that is happening during startup.

The Leopard install disk may be able to perform a disk verify & repair, but that may not be the issue. Disk Utility on the install disk does that.

You can spend time troubleshooting this but that is complex & it is clear your Mac will perform badly with only 4GB of free space. It is entirely possible the lack of disk space is hanging the boot process.

Startup troubleshooting consists of using 'safe mode' and 'verbose mode' - not trivial for a novice and is complicated by the age of your OS.

Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up - Apple ...

How to start up your Mac in single-user or verbose mode - Apple Support

It's your call, but I feel a clean install may be the best in your situation.

With only 4GB of free space I think it is not enough to re-install 10.5 into, it will also require updates after first boot if it even works.