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The mp will only install with 10.6.4 - the disc ou got from apple is useless - get a refund for it

Install SL on your mb 10.6.4 amd above - connect the two via FireWire, restart mp whilst holding t down, then on your mb, you could use carbon copy cloner to clone the mb boot drive to the mp or erase the mp boot and when booting up the mp (u may need the SL install disc) you can choose 'restore from impeaching back up' ie the cloned mb disc image

Yes, I've read this numerous times on this and MacRumors forums. However, the explanation I got from the Apple Tech was that perhaps what I had read on the forums was do to the possibility that those who have tried to boot the MP with a 10.6.3 install disc were not using a registered disc. Since the disc they sent is apparently registered to my MP, they could think of no reason it wouldn't boot the MP. I will be installing it on an external drive Tuesday at work and I'll try to boot from there.

However, my question was, once I have 10.6.3 installed on the drive can I install the Combo Update without being booted into SL? I realize I might be beating a dead horse here, but I am rather stubborn and like to prove or disprove my theories, just for my own satisfaction.

Thanks again Steve
 
Yes, I've read this numerous times on this and MacRumors forums. However, the explanation I got from the Apple Tech was that perhaps what I had read on the forums was do to the possibility that those who have tried to boot the MP with a 10.6.3 install disc were not using a registered disc. Since the disc they sent is apparently registered to my MP, they could think of no reason it wouldn't boot the MP. I will be installing it on an external drive Tuesday at work and I'll try to boot from there.

However, my question was, once I have 10.6.3 installed on the drive can I install the Combo Update without being booted into SL? I realize I might be beating a dead horse here, but I am rather stubborn and like to prove or disprove my theories, just for my own satisfaction.

Thanks again Steve

10.6.4 has certain drivers / firmware essential to SL running on a 5,1 mp - 10.6.3 hasn't got these so won't install, nothing to do with machine locked install discs vs retail discs. Sounds like apple are confused.

10.6.3 won't work on a 5,1 mp - only 10.6.4 and up. I don't think it will work by installing from a 10.6.3 - you may get to the 'disc utility' option - so from here, you could restore from a .4+ mb

I installed SL on my lion soiled mp by Using a clone of my MacBook using .8 - 11 months on no problems.

Maybe just call apple and say disc doesn't work - am you send .4

Edit- think 10.6.3 was the highest retail disc apple made- not sure they made a machine specific higher than this
 
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And then there's that other option. Run lion or mountain lion, but run your legacy software under snow leopard through VMWARE. Problem solved.

That sounds great!
How do I do that?

It won't work since legally you can only do it under the same OS host. You can virtualize lion under a lion host or ML under a ML host.

It is an urban myth that Apple's Snow Leopard EULA prohibits its use within a virtualization program in Lion.

Full Snow Leopard Installation Instructions into Parallels 7

[click on images to enlarge]
 

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As the OP I would like to thank all of you good folks who have offered your expertise and opinions toward a solution to my little problem. The final solution for me was to follow Steve's approach. I already had a 10.6.3 disc supplied by Apple when I purchased the refurb MacPro, so I cloned the MacBook(10.5.8) to an external HDD and upgraded that using the 10.6.3 disc. I then ran the 10.6.8 combo upgrade and booted the MP from that drive. Seems to be working well, no issues so far, although I have been spending a lot of time setting up Lion and working with it as much as possible. I'm attempting to get things set to use as many of my most important apps as possible in Lion, but I know there will still be a few that I might have to run in SL. Of course that would mean rebooting into SL, which is a bit of a nuisance. If I could run it in Parallels that would seem to be a much more convenient solution. I must admit that I have absolutely NO experience with Parallels and I've been reading the suggested method for installing SL into the Parallels environment.

All of this to set up the likely ridiculous question I am about to ask. Once in the Parallels environment, would it be possible to clone the external drive with SL installed and would it run as expected, or at all? My guess is that neither of those options would work. It would seem to be a far too simple approach, considering the one suggested by MichaelLAX for installing SL in Parallels. However, please consider my total lack of experience with Parallels and forgive my ignorance in this matter. I abide by the saying that the only stupid questions are the ones not asked.

Thanks again.
 
The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (now deceased) once told me: "There are no stupid questions; only stupid answers!"

I suspect that Parallels will not afford you a way to install a clone of an external disk that then becomes bootable in Parallels (and not just accessible as an additional virtual hard disk).

Which raises the question: why not just install Snow Leopard into Parallels and then install the PowerPC applications into it that you need to run in SL? It should not take up that much time and only has to be done once. Once completed, I always recommend that a duplicate copy of the Snow Leopard.pvm file be kept in case the original one becomes corrupt.

Further I always advise that you should NEVER save data files in a virtualized environment (including Windows). I always keep these file in my Lion environment and then access and modify them in Snow Leopard, but again save them back in the Lion environment.
 
Why not just make a 10.6.8 disk?

Thats what I did.

Step 1:
Take the 10.6.3 disk.
Image to a file.
Then write that to a USB stick

Step 2:
Then in another machine running Snow Leopard, run the 10.6.8 installer, and point it at the USB disk, and it will update the installer to 10.6.8 install..

Step 3:
Use that new USB to install...


Or use one of the convoluted methods here - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120123175902871

Or download a premade torrent with it.
You own the OS, right?
 
Shanghalloz:

I am not sure what problem your solution is solving...

If I understand the problem correctly, the OP is not looking for a 10.6.8 installation disk, but thanks for pointing out how to create one.

Once 10.6 (or 10.6.3, the only two "retail" Snow Leopard Install DVDs available) is installed into Parallels, following the remainder of the STEPS in my installation instructions includes updating it online to 10.6.8, plus the other updates available.

UPDATE: Oh, I see: an installer that will boot on later Macs requiring 10.6.7+
 
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