Remote Install problems

[quidire]

Well, I'm trying to reinstall the OS on my fiancée's MBA (and ideally, do a secure erase on the MBA's SSD). I've read the Apple Support kb documents, and the MR guide that's posted in this forum, but none addresses my issue:

Regardless of what network type I use (airport or ethernet), the MBA won't actually link up to the remote install cd. In other words, I press option, the start up disk selection interface comes up, I select "Mac OS X Install DVD", the Remote Install application displays "Waiting for the other computer to start up", and then the MBA boots into the currently installed OS, and completely ignores the install DVD.

I've tried holding down option on the second boot, that just takes me back to the selection interface.

Any thoughts?
-RS

 

[quidire]

Okay, I went out and bought the MBA Superdrive, that still didn't solve the problem (reboot loop). Then I went and tried using the Snow Leopard DVD (instead of the Leopard DVD, which I was going to use and then upgrade to Snow Leopard). That seems to have worked (installing as we speak).

I had no idea we couldn't install previous versions of OS X on our Macs, once upgraded...

 

[HowieR32]

You didn't mention if you selected the remote install application on the host computer with the OS DVD... You have to run that program to make it available first.

I also had problems with recovery using the Leopard DVD. I think it is Leopard OS itself; it doesn't run well (if at all) trying to recover. For me, it wouldn't read the time machine backup properly and would just sit there trying to load it up doing nothing.

Once I used the snow leopard DVD it worked perfectly...