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lurkjerk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 4, 2011
2
0
Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster, looking for some SL installation help.

First, I know this is pretty late to the party, seeing as we're on the verge of 10.7 and all. And I know a lot of people have had to ask for help on this topic. Unfortunately, either because this specific issue has not been addressed much or because I suck at searching, I'm unable to find anywhere that deals with my problem. So any instruction you can give would be awesome.

Basically, my dad received an iPad as a present, but his laptop is still running 10.4.11 (it's a 4- or 5-year-old Macbook). I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to bump him up to Snow Leopard, but all I have around is my SL disc (my Leopard disc has mysteriously disappeared). When I tried to upgrade by clean install, I got the old "Can't be installed on a machine without Leopard" error right after the language select screen; it wouldn't even let me select the Disk Utility/other options from the top (they were grayed out). Eventually I found this thread, specifically the post second from the bottom saying that by clicking 'Restore from Backup' you get access to the Utilities menu, and can wipe your hd that way. Did that, erased the harddrive (no problems), restarted, booted from disc, and attempted to install again - SAME PROBLEM. The "Cannot install on non-Leopard computer" error pops up, and I can only Restart or Restore From Backup.

Sorry if this is a repost or if this issue has been dealt with tons of times, but I'm going crazy trying to fix this frustrating issue, and my google searches are giving me nothing. Any help with getting this SL installation over with would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!
 

MacForScience

macrumors 6502
Sep 7, 2010
481
5
USA
Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster, looking for some SL installation help.

First, I know this is pretty late to the party, seeing as we're on the verge of 10.7 and all. And I know a lot of people have had to ask for help on this topic. Unfortunately, either because this specific issue has not been addressed much or because I suck at searching, I'm unable to find anywhere that deals with my problem. So any instruction you can give would be awesome.

Basically, my dad received an iPad as a present, but his laptop is still running 10.4.11 (it's a 4- or 5-year-old Macbook). I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to bump him up to Snow Leopard, but all I have around is my SL disc (my Leopard disc has mysteriously disappeared). When I tried to upgrade by clean install, I got the old "Can't be installed on a machine without Leopard" error right after the language select screen; it wouldn't even let me select the Disk Utility/other options from the top (they were grayed out). Eventually I found this thread, specifically the post second from the bottom saying that by clicking 'Restore from Backup' you get access to the Utilities menu, and can wipe your hd that way. Did that, erased the harddrive (no problems), restarted, booted from disc, and attempted to install again - SAME PROBLEM. The "Cannot install on non-Leopard computer" error pops up, and I can only Restart or Restore From Backup.

Sorry if this is a repost or if this issue has been dealt with tons of times, but I'm going crazy trying to fix this frustrating issue, and my google searches are giving me nothing. Any help with getting this SL installation over with would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

You can try backing the machine up (clone the drive) onto an external drive.

Wipe the internal drive and then try from a fresh format and see if that does it.

Cheers
 

lurkjerk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 4, 2011
2
0
You can try backing the machine up (clone the drive) onto an external drive.

Wipe the internal drive and then try from a fresh format and see if that does it.

Cheers


I've already backed the machine up onto an external (using Carbon Copy Cloner) and formatted the drives. The problem is that the SL installer still gives me the "Cannot install onto a computer that is not running Leopard" error immediately after choosing a language.
 
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