iMac A1207 (2006) OS installation problems

[Morgan Mac]

I was recently given a partially incomplete iMac A1207 (2006) computer. The LCD panel and hard drive were missing, but everything else seems intact. I bought a mini DVI to VGA adapter to use a separate monitor as the display, and put in a 120GB Kingston SSD.

Upon start up, I put in a 10.6 "Snow Leopard" installation disk, but I'm given the error "Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer." Using Disk Utility I was able to format the SSD to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" but still receive the error.

What could be causing this error message? The SSD is brand new, the RAM is correct and functional, the speakers work, and keyboard and mouse input are being received. I've also tried a 80GB SATA hard drive, but it couldn't be recognized and swapped the optical drive for another one to no change.

 

[mikehalloran]

Did you boot from the install CD?

On a Mac this old, you may have to boot from the commercial 10.6 release CD in order to install. Hopefully, that will work. It was a paid upgrade but someone will have a disk image that can be uploaded into a DropBox account so that you can snag and burn the image. My office is torn apart for remodeling and it will be at least a week before I'd be able to find one.

If not, you're going to have to back up to 10.5 release disk. It's possible that some firmware updates need to be run first. Reaching back into my memory, I'm remembering one with 10.5.7 or 10.5.8 that had to be run before 10.6 would install.

Let's hope that you don't have to find the correct system restore disk with OS 10.4 on it.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Wrong Scheme on the SSD? It must be partitioned using the GUID partition map, not MBR. Chances are, it was MBR out of the box so if you just formatted the partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), you may not have changed that.

Boot to the Snow Leopard DVD, click Utilities menu > Disk Utility, select the SSD itself (the very top item, not your boot partition) and click Partition. Then down below the Partition Layout, click Options to set the Scheme to GUID. If Options is greyed out, try changing the Partition Layout from "Current" to "1 Partition".

 

[Morgan Mac]

Did you boot from the install CD?

On a Mac this old, you may have to boot from the commercial 10.6 release CD in order to install. Hopefully, that will work. It was a paid upgrade but someone will have a disk image that can be uploaded into a DropBox account so that you can snag and burn the image. My office is torn apart for remodeling and it will be at least a week before I'd be able to find one.

If not, you're going to have to back up to 10.5 release disk. It's possible that some firmware updates need to be run first. Reaching back into my memory, I'm remembering one with 10.5.7 or 10.5.8 that had to be run before 10.6 would install.

Let's hope that you don't have to find the correct system restore disk with OS 10.4 on it.

Hi Mike. Do you know where I can find the ISO of 10.5 or 10.4 online? I still haven't resolved the issue.

Also here is the error log:

 

[mikehalloran]

If you were able to boot from an external drive and got that error, this is good. As explained earlier, you must erase reformat the SSD properly before a Mac OS can be installed on it. Then you must install using the commercial installer — if you have the disk image, it can be run from an external drive capable of booting the Mac or the internal SuperDrive using the DVD-DL.

With 10.4, you probably need a restore disk. 10.5, and 10.6 were paid releases. If you can find them on the internet, good for you but I don't have valid links. I have both but my DropBox account is too small—both were released on dual-layer DVDs and are around 6G in size.

If you have a DropBox account with 7G or so free, I can upload a disk image to you. GoogleDrive works also. Send me a PM.